


But Half His Foe

by Alona



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Gen, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 20:25:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16002650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: The local Magisterium turns to Nero Wolfe when an alethiometer reader goes missing in New York City.(A Nero Wolfe mystery set in Lyra's World.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to everyone who encouraged me along the way and especially to those who inspired me; you know who you are. That evening's lobster soup lives on in my memory (and in this fic). 
> 
> PS: Yep, I know Tabby is the name of a character in "Easter Parade"; it was too good to pass up and I'm not sorry. Assume it's slightly awkward if he exists in this universe.

The Trinity man had a pink, pointed little nose and pink-rimmed, watering eyes. He was around forty years old, with light brown hair going thin on top. He was the kind of man who, in a well-arranged world, would have had a ferret dæmon; in this one, a common pigeon, which he no doubt insisted was a rock dove, sat on his shoulder, cooing to him and fluffing her feathers restlessly. His name was Father Alexis MacLellan, and the best thing I knew about him was that he was facing down Nero Wolfe's glare without quailing, which hardly went for everyone who had sat in the red leather chair at the end of Wolfe's desk over the years. But then in his line of work you'd have to be sturdier than MacLellan seemed at a first glance, and a second, too.

"I fail to see why you've come to me, Father MacLellan," Wolfe was saying disapprovingly. "The police are perfectly capable of handling a missing person case."

And our bank account was in good shape, so he could afford to flaunt his prejudices by turning business away. 

"It's too sensitive a problem to bring the police in on, not to mention that it would expose us to—no, no, it must not be suspected that Mr. Albert is missing."

He was a good liar, but his dæmon was on edge. I'd seen her puff up just before he said the name, then relax when he got it out without a hitch. The police question was kid stuff; the police meant Tammany Hall, and Trinity wanted Tammany out of its corner of the sandbox. The Magisterium's sole toehold on our fair island was even more zealous than its illustrious parent about defending its secrets. 

"If I am to find this man," said Wolfe, who rarely missed something he was looking for, "I'll need to know something about him. His real name, for a start, and what he was doing for the Magisterium in this City."

With MacLellan in the throes of indecision, his dæmon rose and flapped around his head. When she had settled onto his knee, he said, "Very well. We're too desperate. But I'm only willing to trust you, Mr. Wolfe." He cut a glance my way. I grinned back. 

"Mr. Goodwin is my confidential assistant. You trust us both, or neither."

MacLellan's sparse eyebrows went up. He choked out an "oh?" and looked directly at what he had been pointedly avoiding for the last of couple minutes, ever since it had looked like Wolfe was going to refuse to take the case.

It was a worthwhile sight: a lean tabby cat dæmon, claws out, hissing and twisting, being fended off lazily by an unusually large tiger dæmon. (Unusually large, that is, by dæmon standards; Osanna was on the lower end of average for a real tiger.) MacLellan kept goggling, and the two dæmons abandoned their scuffle. Osanna flopped onto her side, and Tabby arranged herself with her legs tucked beneath her between the tiger's front paws. Then she blinked once, slowly. I have been told real cats do that as a gesture of trust or affection. With Tabby you wouldn't mistake it for that, take it from me.

"Haven't you ever seen a healthy working relationship before, Father?" I asked, to see him jump.

Wolfe and I went through periods of not talking to each other pretty regularly, especially when there was no case on. Tabby and Osanna were more likely to go on fighting. Other people got uncomfortable around these displays, but they never bothered me, and Wolfe had never let on if they bothered him. It was always easier to get back on speaking terms when our dæmons remained on shouting and scratching ones. 

"Mr. Albert's real name is Nicolas de Saint-Aignan." The words left MacLellan in a rush, and when they were out, his mouth snapped shut to keep the rest in. His watery eyes went wide, as if he expected an Inquisitor to jump out from under his chair and haul him off for a round with the old rack and thumbscrews. 

Wolfe took up the thread. "One of Europe's foremost alethiometer readers, based out of the Sorbonne. And he has been in New York under an assumed name for four months. For what purpose?"

"Aside from harassing the local wildlife," I added, having glimpsed the so-called Mr. Albert around town, especially in the first couple months of his sojourn. He was a sleek little man with a fat white rabbit dæmon and oily manners. 

"If it becomes necessary," MacLellan squeezed out, taking no notice of me, "I can apply for clearance to disclose a part of his mission. Right now...right now, it's more important that..."

"Ah," said Wolfe, softly, and Osanna picked herself up to stand at his elbow, which brought her head high enough to be seen over the desk from the client's point of view. They were both as vain as each other and knew just what an impressive landscape that presented. "Ah," Wolfe repeated, to the accompaniment of Osanna's low growl, "the alethiometer has gone missing along with M. de Saint-Aignan."

MacLellan hung his head. I was elated: Wolfe was in it for keeps now. An all-knowing magical doohickey was loose in New York, and he was desperate for a peep at it.

"That is," said MacLellan, "the problem presents a slightly different aspect."

"We'll see. Archie, your notebook." 

I was already turning to it, and Tabby had hopped up onto the edge of Wolfe's desk. She ran along it smooth as a streak of lightning, narrowly avoiding knocking anything over with great precision, then leapt lightly onto a corner of my desk to face the client while I wrote. If I missed any subtleties she would fill me in later. Her memory was every bit as good as mine. Maybe better. 

"Go on," Wolfe said. 

"Trinity Church has been housing M. de Saint-Aignan at the Churchill Hotel, through an intermediary corporation. He was supposed to arrive as usual this morning to report on certain readings he has been doing for us. He never showed, so his contact sent up the alarm. We've been in constant motion, though to little purpose, ever since. He won't answer the phone. None of our connections has seen him since yesterday evening. He is nowhere we can find him. I suggested coming to you. It was...controversial, but I carried my point." 

"Have you made inquiries at the hotel?" Wolfe asked. 

"We don't dare. As we're not officially connected to him, we would need to go through the police to gain access to his hotel room and anything he might have been keeping in the hotel safe. Above all else, Trinity Church would prefer to avoid a public fuss."

Trinity Church, not the Magisterium, which would come down on its New World subordinate like Oniogara Falls if it became public that Trinity had misplaced an alethiometrist living in New York under its protection and using a false name. 

"With the result," Wolfe said, "that the alethiometer may be missing along with him, or it may be safely locked in the Churchill's safe, or less safely in his room." 

"That's right," said MacLellan unhappily. His dæmon was eyeing the arm of the red leather chair as if she was considering pecking at it. 

Wolfe continued: "A point to clarify, Father. Saint-Aignan has been missing, potentially, from as early as yesterday evening—when?" 

"Around seven-thirty." 

"From as early as yesterday evening at seven-thirty to as late as whenever he left his hotel this morning, if in fact he returned to it last night. That isn't a lot of time. Does the Magisterium have reason to suspect that Saint-Aignan is in trouble, and has not simply taken an unannounced leave of absence?" 

"He wouldn't," MacLellan insisted. "He's no paragon, Heaven knows, one works with what the Lord provides, but Nicolas is a dutiful man. Something has happened. It is vital that he be found as quickly and as quietly as possible." 

"And if it can only be one or the other?" I said, looking up. "Which one takes priority, quickly or quietly?" 

Wolfe gave a nod of an eighth of an inch and waited for the client to answer. 

After an unexpectedly brief wait, MacLellan came out with a decisive, "Quickly."

Which was the right answer, of course, and Magisterium flunky though he was, he might even have known it. 

Wolfe kept on at him for another fifteen minutes, but MacLellan had nothing else of value to contribute, aside from Saint-Aignan's room number, which I could have got from a chat with the house dick, and a description of him, which was useless, since I had seen the guy. I got the impression that MacLellan personally liked Saint-Aignan, or at least found him nice to talk to. Finally and impatiently, he introduced the question of a fee. "I have been told," he said, and with phrasing like that I naturally wondered who exactly had been telling him, "that your services don't come cheap." 

Wolfe snorted, his least friendly snort. "There's no need to go into it now, Father MacLellan. When the case is completed, I'll decide on an appropriate fee, taking into account that you are, as you say, desperate, and that you represent an organization whose pockets expand to encompass the wealth of all of Europe." 

If you didn't know him as well as I did, you would have missed the slight emphasis on "all," the slight widening of Osanna's yellow eyes. It gave me too much of a headache to keep up with the Magisterium's endless series of civilizing campaigns, or whatever they were calling it this week, in the Balkans, but I knew Wolfe followed them, and it would be exactly as accurate to say he resented them as it would be to say he was overweight. 

MacLellan let it go, if he even noticed. He was out the door in another minute, the pigeon, or rock dove, fluttering anxiously after him. 

"Look, I know he wasn't going to give us anything else," I started, coming back into the office after seeing the holy father out the door and down the front steps, "but you might have kept him a little longer so he'd feel like he was getting his money's worth." 

Wolfe ignored that. 

"You didn't even ask who the guy's contact was." 

"Come now, Archie. You can do better than that."

That was smug. I heard Tabby, who'd meandered back over to Osanna, mutter, "We deserved that," and I had to agree. "Okay, MacLellan's the contact," I said. "Why hedge about it, then?" 

"I don't know. I cannot even say for certain that this isn't some convoluted machination on the part of Trinity Church. We must independently verify the facts we have been given, beginning with M. de Saint-Aignan's whereabouts and recent movements. You've met him Archie. What do you think about the likelihood that he has simply taken off? Or defected, for that matter?"

"Pass. He spilled a drink on me once, and once I couldn't avoid hearing him tell a boring story at the next table. Passable accent speaking English, if you care. He'd be a decent dancer if he only learned what to do with that clumsy rabbit of his. He's not my favorite person, but that doesn't mean he's a slacker or a traitor." 

"We'll leave that question open, then, until we have more of the facts in our possession. Tell me everything you do remember about him." 

I dug up everything I could, which was less than it might have been, since my attention had been elsewhere during our encounters. Places, dates, and a few interactions I'd happened to glimpse was what it amounted to. Wolfe listened, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. When I'd run out of material, I concluded with: "So what do you think Saint-Aignan was doing here?" 

Wolfe sat up straight, looking as though he would have liked to sulk about my pronunciation, but there were more pressing matters to consider. "I don't pretend to understand the inner workings of a crazed band of marauding zealots. But there is little doubt that the Consistorial Court of Discipline is involved. The Magisterium has been squeezing resistance and dissent out of every last corner of Europe for decades now, and having achieved its ends there, it has turned its eyes on the rest of the world, including the heresy-riddled New World. It can hardly be coincidence that this is happening in a year when a third of the City Assembly is up for reelection." 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tabby dodging the wild lashings of Osanna's tail. I have seen that tiger as calm and unmoving as a stone sphinx when I knew Wolfe to be furious enough that only inertia was keeping him from throwing something or someone; in private, with only me to witness it, control like that just wasn't necessary. 

"It was only a question," I said politely. "I'm off to the Churchill to sniff out a lead, unless you have some pearls of wisdom to let fall first?"

"Be careful, Archie. I don't like working for these people, and I don't like the near certainty that you will encounter some of them on your own. Try not to say or do anything rash. Confound the man, why did he have to go and lose himself here and now?" 

"Cheer up, sir. MacLellan might still work out you were insulting him and phone to fire us." 

"He will not. I'm his only hope." 

"Gosh, are you sure you shouldn't have turned the case down, then? Only if you're feeling squeamish about giving succor to the enemy and all that, I can ring him right now and you can tell him to buzz off. That'd be a real thumb in the Holy Church's eye. Of course it'll mean giving up a chance to write yourself a blank check on the Magisterium's treasury, and put paid to that little spark of hope you're nursing of getting to exercise your genius against that alethiometer, but if you're uncomfortable I wouldn't dream of forcing you to—"

"Archie. Shut up." 

"Yes, sir. And while I'm out, should I introduce myself into Saint-Aignan's hotel room? In case he's lying in there dead."

"I leave it to your discretion." 

Before I left, I saw him speculatively eyeing the book on his desk. It was a travelogue with the name of a Brytish aristocrat on it, which in Wolfe's opinion hadn't been written by him. I agreed, based on the photogram of him on the inside flap. 

It was almost half past noon, so I stopped by the kitchen to tell Fritz, cook and house pride, that I would find my own lunch. Also to tell him I was going to look for one of his countrymen, so he could have the pleasure of reminding me he was Swiss and not French, which I wouldn't have bragged about if I were him, considering. I found him chopping herbs while his little gray fox dæmon expertly cracked eggs into a bowl, which is always a treat to watch. 

"It is a good case, Archie?" Fritz asked.

"The best. We'll all end up in a Magisterium dungeon before this is over." 

Fritz giggled obligingly. He had a firm belief in mine and Wolfe's ability to dodge trouble. For that matter, I wasn't nearly as spooked about dealing with the Magisterium as Wolfe was, and I resented how much he was letting it get to him. We were a long way from Geneva, after all, protected by the combined might of the democratic political machine of New York City and the entire over-funded League of Ivies that collectively owned about a third of the Union, not to mention all our allies throughout New World and all the neutral nations and territories that would become our allies if the Magisterium came sniffing around in earnest. What could the Magisterium, whose holdings comprised Trinity Church, its grounds, and a handful or so of buildings downtown, do against all that, be it ne'er so old and twisty and steeped in stomach-churning evil? 

I grabbed my hat and headed out the door, Tabby climbing up onto my shoulder. 

"You saw him looking at that book?" she said. 

"Did I. Times like this I wish I was one of those Northern witches. Then I'd leave you behind to give that lazy tiger a poke in the belly when Wolfe's attention started to wander." 

"You wouldn't. I wouldn't stand for being cooped up with them all day. Maybe I'd leave you behind." 

"I don't cotton to you as a bird, anyway." 

"And somehow I can't see you prancing around in skimpy bits of silk." 

We were strolling steadily eastward already. Our conversations never went much of anywhere when we were out walking, and that was just fine. It felt good to be out on a job. We could do our thinking when there was something to think about.


	2. Chapter 2

Joe Collins, house dick at the Churchill, met my friendly inquiry about Saint-Aignan-Albert's comings and goings with professional discourtesy. 

"Who wants to know?"

His dæmon was a tarantula, and I could feel how much of a temptation it was for Tabby to bat her around a little; for all that, he was a decent guy. 

"Keep it under your hat," I said, dropping my voice, "but the Republicans are thinking of running him against LaMonte in the fifth district, and naturally they want him checked out first. Love nests and dope habits don't really play well with their voters." 

"All right, don't tell me," Collins said sourly. "Excuse me for breathing. Only I had one of Bascom's guys in here about a month back give me the third degree about this Nick Albert, who's never done a thing in his life, far as I can tell, and now here's Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin looking for him. A guy's bound to get curious, isn't he? So what's it about?"

"Confidential," I said, not amused. "I'll tell you if and when. Did he come in last night or not? If you can't help me, say so right now, and I'll go get speech out of the concierge's desk, or maybe a potted palm." 

Collins looked as disappointed in me as if I had insulted his mother. He scratched his nose, with the tarantula clinging to the back of his hand the whole time. I didn't like that. "He came in at eight and went out again less than half an hour later." Tabby gave a hiss from my shoulder, and Collins added, "I've been keeping tabs on him, since I knew he was a hot ticket." 

"Find out anything worth knowing?"

"His tab's being paid by some corporation owned by a corporation owned by God knows what, it's over my head, anyway, as long as it _is_ being paid on the regular. Hardly ever gets visitors. Mostly dames, none worth a mention. Goes out a lot." 

"He got anything in the hotel safe?"

Collins just looked at me. 

"All right, fair enough. Anything else you can tell me about him, or put me onto someone who can?"

"There's that maid," Collins admitted. "He took her out a few times. She might have a line for you. Is he in trouble?" 

"Nice try. I'd like a word with the maid." 

"Since I'm a pal, unlike others I could name, I guess I'll get her for you." 

"Much obliged." 

About half an hour later I was just wishing I'd gone out for lunch while I waited when Hanna Brandt joined me at the hotel bar. She was one of those white-blond Danes or Laplanders or what-have-you; Lutherans, chased out of their grim strongholds at last by the Magisterium in its latest heretic-stomping push. She was about twenty-four, not pretty but with lines in her face that were interesting to look at. Her uniform was spotlessly clean and perfectly pressed and hung on her as though she'd borrowed it from her big sister. Her eyes, and her dæmon's, kept flickering down to my notebook as we went over the preliminaries, in a conditioned response passed down through a dozen or so generations of staunch religious outcasts deflecting Magisterium scrutiny. 

"Yeah, Nicky used to take me out sometimes," she was saying, blowing out a mouthful of smoke towards her bedraggled-looking starling dæmon. She had a memory of an accent instead of the accent itself, almost charming with her abrupt way of speaking. "Not since he got bored of me, though, one month, two months ago. I don't think he cared much about me before that. Just passing the time. And I could speak French to him. He likes that, or he used to." Another drag on the fast-dwindling cigarette. It was her second since she'd sat down. Taking a chance, I'd let her know that we were considering Saint-Aignan-Albert missing, possibly in danger, and I couldn't tell yet if it was helping. She'd had one useful piece of information right off: that one of her fellow maids had gone into the room that morning to clean and had found nothing out of the ordinary, certainly not a corpse. 

"You and Albert," I said, "how does that work? With him being a Frenchman, and you, excuse me for saying so, obviously being a refugee of the religious wars?"

She gave me a condescending little smile. "Oh, that doesn't matter. It's all back there. And Nicky, he's not like that. Not really one of them. He just doesn't give a fig about politics or any of it." 

Either she was a world champion liar, or she really had no idea who her Nicky worked for. The starling dæmon seemed deathly bored of the conversation, which wasn't an indication either way. 

"Well, it's your business. Do you know whose company Albert's been keeping since you dropped him?" It was a little too pat that Saint-Aignan, in the space of a month or so, had faded from the social scene, dropped Hanna Brandt, and attracted the interest of someone with the gumption to hire a private investigator. 

"Jane Kerr's at the Seal and Club." She shrugged, just the shoulder the starling was sitting on, and he made a tiny, practiced hop. "Among others." 

"Kerr? Really?" I confess it took me about a half a second to shift gears. "Is Albert a card sharp?"

"Fancies himself one, maybe. To hear him talk about it, strategy and the feel of the table and all that." 

Something wasn't adding up. I couldn't see Saint-Aignan patronizing a notorious gambling den like Jane Kerr's Seal and Club. It would make a certain amount of sense for an alethiometrist to use his direct line to omniscience for his own gain, but two points stuck: first, horses or dogs would be easier to cheat at than cards that way; second, it didn't go with MacLellan's idea about Saint-Aignan's dutifulness, which I was still inclined to believe. 

"Is he any good at it?" I asked. 

"Not a bit," said Hanna, snipping off the words with a certain morbid glee. "He never said so, but he was always losing, I could tell. When we went straight to dancing, it was because he didn't have the money to take me out to a proper dinner. And when he thought I couldn't see, he was doing sums on bits of scrap—real big numbers, sometimes. He always got more money in the end, though. He's living off one of those European fortunes, you know, means he doesn't have to work." 

I nodded along. So probably Saint-Aignan-Albert wasn't cheating. So, what, he liked cards too much? It was a screamingly good gag, an alethiometrist getting cleaned out at the tables on a regular basis; I was looking forward to telling Wolfe that one. But there was something else: if Hanna was right about the real big numbers, either Saint-Aignan was deep in debt or he had found an avenue outside Trinity to pay it off. I didn't trust MacLellan very far, as a matter of principle, but I figured he'd have mentioned if Saint-Aignan had requested a massive advance on his pay. 

"Where else did he go, aside from Jane Kerr's?" 

She thought hard, then named a handful of similar, less notorious establishments in the vicinity of the Canal. "Can I get back to work now? I don't want to owe Mr. Collins for covering for me." Something must have given me away, because she went on, "Don't get the wrong idea. Mr. Collins is all right. I just don't want to owe anything to anyone. I wasn't brought up to it." 

"Go on, then." 

She got up, seemed to remember the drink she'd ordered and downed it in a couple of frantic gulps. Then she lingered, not looking at me. There were dark blue half-circles under her eyes. I wondered if she was, in spite of the unsentimental song and dance, mooning after Saint-Aignan (enough to kill him?), or if she was in some other, worse trouble. Maybe it was just that pale Nordic skin of hers. She was a tough kid, anyhow, and I was reaching for my wallet before Tabby dug her claws lightly into my shoulder to stop me; she was right: Hanna Brandt was just the type to get offended by an attempt at a tip, and we might need her later. 

"Is... Will Nicky be all right?" she asked, in a brittle sort of voice. 

I didn't try to feed her a soothing line but just told her what I could: that there was no way to know. She nodded and left. To be thorough, I asked the front desk whether Nick Albert had checked himself out—he had not—and then took the elevator up to his room in case he had come back. No answer there, but then I hadn't expected it. Moments later I was down on the sidewalk, deciding between grabbing lunch at a nearby eatery and heading home to report or continuing down to the Canal to eat at the floating food hall before dropping in on Jane Kerr and sundry associates. 

Before I had come to a decision, a hatchet-headed dog dæmon of no identifiable breed lumbered up alongside me and a gruff voice behind me said, "I hoped I'd find you here, Goodwin." 

I turned and grinned into the red, distempered face of Inspector Cramer of the NYPD. "That was clever of you, Inspector. What can I do for you?"

"You can have lunch with me," Cramer said as if it hurt him. 

"I'm flattered, but I'm a little busy just now. Could we—"

"No, we couldn't, and I'm not in the mood for your lip. You'll have lunch with us and like it!" 

The us was interesting. 

Cramer's dæmon had her teeth bared and her hackles raised, but in a general way, I thought, not out of any special enmity towards me. Tabby, naturally, sat on the sidewalk washing a paw like the queen of cats she was. 

"Am I under arrest?" I asked casually. 

Cramer glared daggers, or truncheons, anyway. "Do you want to be?"

"I don't know what you think I've done, Inspector, but I'll come along to set the record straight. Relieve my curiosity while we're at it—how did you know where to find me? Echolocation?"

"Beat cop spotted you going into the Churchill," Cramer grunted. "We were keeping an eye out." 

Cramer's shoulders were up by his ears and his mutt kept looking from side to side and sniffing the air. He wasn't happy and he didn't like what he was doing, which made it only too likely he was playing errand boy for his bosses. Sure enough, when, at the end of a short drive in his official car, he led me into a private room of a nondescript restaurant, there was a man there whose presence explained things. He was leaning up against the wall, ignoring the table set, note this, for two. 

He was nearer forty than thirty, black, only an inch taller than me but so narrow it looked like more than that. He was dressed in a magnificently tailored confection in burgundy, with the draped front on the jacket in the style favored in the Haïtian Republic, over a black shirt with a pale gold tie. He had the personality and the good looks to pull all that off. His dæmon was one of those seagulls that aspires to be an albatross, pure white except for the black tip of each wing; when she spread those wings from his shoulder, a shadow fell over the earth. 

His name was Harvey Lesperance, Tammany Hall sweetheart and incumbent assemblyman for the eleventh district. I'd been to a couple of his speeches, and I was looking forward to voting for him for mayor within the decade. I hoped he appreciated it. 

"Archie Goodwin," he said smoothly, unfolding from the wall and holding out a hand. "I've heard of you."

"Likewise," I answered, flashing him a grin as we shook. He answered with one a shark would have envied, not the one he used in public; it showed off how handsome he was, though not in a way calculated to get votes. "A pleasure, assemblyman." 

"I bet. Let's get right down to it, yeah? Sit, sit. The inspector won't be joining us—unless he's reconsidered?" 

"He's all yours. Sir." Cramer had installed himself by the door. He was by no means pleased with the honor Assemblyman Lesperance was trying to do him. 

"Father Alexis MacLellan," Lesperance announced. 

I kept my eyes wide and guileless. Tabby was curled up at my feet, keeping an eye on Cramer and leaving Lesperance to me. "Oh?"

Another sliver of that grin. "Of the Bishop's staff at Trinity Church. He spent an hour and ten minutes in Nero Wolfe's house this morning. Shortly after, you were spotted at the Churchill Hotel. We—City Hall, that is—would like to be in the loop." 

"I'd love to help City Hall if I could, Mr. Lesperance, but Mr. Wolfe doesn't keep me around for decoration. That's confidential client information you're after. I can't disclose it without losing my job." 

"Show some respect for once in your life, Goodwin, or—"

"Please," said Lesperance, neatly cutting Cramer off. He gestured to the door, where a waiter was just coming in. 

We ordered drinks. Cramer, again, refused all sustenance. I was feeling sorrier for him by the moment. 

"So Wolfe has accepted Trinity Church as his client?" Lesperance asked, when we'd been brought our Scotch on the rocks. 

"That," I agreed, "or MacLellan's got personal troubles.

"Oh, sure." 

A politician's dæmon is always fun to watch, and I've seen more than a few close up while working for Nero Wolfe. Watching Lesperance's, perched on the back of his chair while he leaned well forward over the table, it was clear he was in a foul mood. So would I have been, in his position: the eleventh district had gone Democrat since the beginning of recorded history, but now it looked like Lesperance's challenger, a lawyer named Matthew Davenport, stood a healthy chance of breaking that streak. It wasn't any fault of Lesperance's, unless you counted being New York's second black assemblyman a fault; anyway, that wasn't all of it: the eleventh district had been filling up with English immigrants lately, except they called themselves ex-pats. When they got here after running from the Magisterium on their home soil, they found New York too free-thinking for comfort, and turned around to support Magisterium-friendly candidates here. I'd advanced the theory once to Wolfe that they did it out of homesickness. 

With all that weighing on him, naturally Lesperance wasn't going to be feeling very sunny. 

"Listen, Goodwin," he said coaxingly, leaning back as the seagull darted forward to settle on his shoulder. "You're supposed to be clever, you can see how it is. No one goes to Nero Wolfe unless they're in real trouble, and if it's Trinity Church, it must be huge. We haven't heard of anything, right, and if we don't get on top of it soon, the Society of St. Tammany starts looking a little less than omniscient." 

"Yeah, and you can't have that, can you," I said disgustedly. Another minute and he'd be on the civic duty schtick. "You listen, Assemblyman Lesperance. I'm a citizen going about my lawful business. You're trying to bribe or threaten me—I'll know which once lunch gets here—into divulging sensitive information about your political opponent's backer. Because Davenport's in bed with Trinity, isn't he? Aren't you guys meant to be running a clean ship these days? Isn't that what every Tammany candidate these past two decades has been selling? New broom, clean slate, all the shiny-sounding platitudes. A high moral tone and corruption out of New York politics! What do you call this, then?" 

I was warming to my subject and could have kept it up for a while, but I didn't want to push it. Lesperance was looking grim, and his dæmon looked like seagulls do just before they snatch your ice cream. And we hadn't even ordered yet. 

"What did I tell you, sir?" Cramer said. "No way Goodwin's going to open up. Waste of time and City money." He looked fierce, but also like he might deep down be just a little proud of me for proving him right. 

"It's on my personal tab, actually," said Lesperance. "We wouldn't want to burden Mr. Goodwin's conscience." 

"I appreciate that," I said sincerely. 

Cramer excused himself then. The rest of that lunch didn't advance us much, and though I tried my best to do well by an acceptable lemon sole, I wouldn't have wanted Wolfe to find out how quickly we rushed through it. Lesperance was too annoyed to be charming company, and of course he had somewhere else to be, which he should have thought of before putting together this production.


	3. Chapter 3

Whoever had had the nifty idea of cutting a canal into the heart of Manhattan a stone's throw from Wall Street to let people with aquatic dæmons come on land to conduct their business in comfort had sure been onto something. 

The Canal was packed as usual that afternoon—the central thoroughfare where boats passed up and down, interrupted by a particularly spectacular narwhal dæmon; the market boats, the towpaths, the narrow sidewalks all bustling with trade in food and small items; and the houseboats holding firm, including one with a canopied deck where an old man and a little girl were playing chess while an octopus dæmon hung half over the rail, slapping the side of the boat with two tentacles to mark time. 

At night the Canal took on a darker aspect; under the sun it was the all-welcoming center of trade and tourism. If I had time, which was a big if, I'd swing by the congestion of boats by the Bowery that made up the floating food hall; a boat claiming to sell authentic Cathay cuisine had taken up a spot at the north-east end recently, and whether it was authentic or not, I wanted to bring one of its dumplings back to Fritz to reverse-engineer. 

I had the hackie let me off on Broadway just above the Canal and wove and shoved the rest of the way to the juncture with the narrower Mercer Street Canal, where the Seal and Club occupied prime real estate. 

Part of the building was built out on piles right over the water. As I approached, a motorboat laden with flat boxes puttered up and into the overhang's shadow, the man at the controls ducking his head. He cut power to the engine, and a manatee dæmon in the water behind the boat took over propelling it out of sight. 

I went around to the main entrance on Mercer Street. There were five steps leading down to the door, and above it the Seal and Club's sign, which looked like a medieval woodcut, a nice and understated image of a seal about to use a club to turn someone into a bloody pulp. Jane Kerr did know how to market herself. 

The joint wouldn't be open at this time of day, but I figured Kerr would be in, transacting business or maybe just catching up on sleep. During lunch I'd started to feel pretty urgent about Saint-Aignan. Call it intuition, but the number of heavy hitters in the picture was climbing too quickly for comfort. I'd dodged a hypothetical tail leaving the restaurant and gone into a drugstore to phone Wolfe with an update. 

"Where have you been?" he barked when I had identified myself. 

"Exchanging pleasantries with City employees. MacLellan had a tail on him, which we should have guessed." 

Wolfe growled. It was somewhat reassuring, after his insulting cautions about the Magisterium, that he didn't bother asking if I'd told the City employees anything they may have wanted to know. 

"Yeah, I know. Anyhow, our little lost lamb is lost all right, and get this, he's been having a love affair, unrequited, with the cards, and losing money at it to the tune of 'real big numbers,' according to my source." I paused. 

"I appreciate the humor of the situation," Wolfe said gruffly, so he probably was amused. "No doubt there's a sound psychological principle behind a man employed in predicting the future choosing games of chance as his vice. Is your idea that he was out seeking to better his fortunes last night?"

"Right, and at the Seal and Club, too. I haven't turned up anything better, so I'll just head down to wait on Jane Kerr, shall I?" 

"A dangerous woman, by all accounts. Have you got a strategy for approaching her?"

"Oh, I was thinking of kidnapping her and bringing her home for you to pick over." 

"Not a bad notion, if the opportunity should arise."

Which was as close as he'd get to admitting he wanted a look at her, a colossal honor I was looking forward to passing on to the lady. 

I hadn't considered the possibility of getting her to the office very likely, and had told Wolfe as much before hanging up. My assessment of its likelihood fell further when I pushed my way into the establishment and was met by a pair of kids in matching black suits and dark grey ties. They stood at either side of the inner doorway like chess pieces: black's knights, from one of those fancy sets where every piece is unique.

They looked barely out of high school. The boy was over six feet tall, wiry-looking, black-haired and brown-eyed and middling dark in a nonspecific way. The girl was short and more heavily muscled than damsels of that age usually are; she was milky-pale, and possibly one of those dark-auburn redheads, but it was hard to be sure with her head shaved. From her face you could guess she had the straight razor that had done it on her person and no particular scruple about using it. 

Actually they both had guns in armpit holsters and had flipped their jacket fronts aside to show them when I came in. The boy was either left-handed or wearing his on the wrong side to mirror her. His dæmon was a large green and grey moth, sitting on his lapel like a living, fluttering pin. 

I took a step so I was in the middle of the entrance hall and grinned at the picture they made. "Archie Goodwin from Nero Wolfe's office to see Jane Kerr on a matter touching her interests. Make it snappy."

"Miss Kerr is engaged. She's not taking callers," said the boy, Texan by his accent, or one of those wide-sky, cattle-wrestling countries out West. Explained the ambiguous race. 

"I understand that, but I can see her now, or I can come back with the police a little later and see her then. Your choice." 

I couldn't, actually, but they looked young enough to scare, so it was worth trying. 

The girl laughed. It was a nice laugh, and I wondered what she'd look like if she grew out her hair and put on a dress. Her blue eyes narrowed as if she'd caught me wondering. "Miss Kerr isn't scared of the police." She glanced to the side of the room, where a fountain was burbling and a turtle dæmon, presumably hers, was swimming lazy circles around its bowl. "Try it on someone who cares." 

"Sorry we can't be more obligin'," the boy added, treacle-sweet, just like he meant it. Meanwhile his friend sounded like a movie gangster. They were an act, all right. 

"Did you show up to auditions together," I asked, "or did Jane Kerr match you up?"

They traded looks. The girl said, "You're not funny, mister." 

"And you ain't seeing Miss Kerr without an appointment." 

I brightened up. "Could I make an appointment?"

"Bonny," the girl hissed impatiently. 

"Well, he can try if he wants, can't he, Sam?" the boy—Bonny, apparently—shot back in a wounded tone. 

Like I said: kids. Still, they were kids with guns, Bonny had probably been rustling cattle in diapers, and Sam's straight razor didn't bear forgetting. 

"On second thought, I'll wait, if that's all right with you, and maybe Jane Kerr could pencil me in on an emergency basis." 

"What's the emergency?" Sam asked suspiciously.

They were giving it their all, those two knights. 

"I'm a missionary, see, and I've come to preach modesty and good works to her little rat army. If you don't mind." 

Their eyes went wide.

"Or I have a marriage proposal to deliver from Mr. Wolfe. Or, what the hell, make something up, you look like you just might have it in you." 

The air between us cooled bit by bit, and then Sam said, very seriously, "You can wait in the stock room. I'll take him, Bonny, you keep an eye on the door." She fished her turtle dæmon out of the fountain and tucked him under her arm without any apparent care for her suit getting wet, or the fact that she was dripping on the hardwood floor. 

As she preceded me out of the inner door, I caught Bonny following her with his eyes, the moth leaving his lapel for the first time to perch on his head; I detected signs of infant infatuation. 

"What's Bonny short for?" I called to him on my way out. 

"Boniface," he answered, blinking. He said it French-like: _bonny-fahss_ ; you could see where Sam got it from. 

"Huh," I said, and hurried after Sam. 

She walked—is it too obvious to say it?—unhurriedly through a series of rooms and corridors that had a close, napping feel to them, all deserted. Tabby had hopped down to the floor to make observations at ground level, which was our usual routine. 

I made conversation. 

"So, did you dream about being a criminal when you were a little girl, or what?" 

"Yes." 

"Seen many people killed?"

"Some. More back home than here." 

I wondered where "back home" was. The tough-guy voice made it impossible to even guess, for me at least. Wolfe might have done better. 

"You know a guy called Nick Albert?" I hazarded. 

She had stopped in front of a door, and now she kicked it open, then gestured inside with the hand that wasn't holding the dæmon. You can't tell much about a turtle's feelings, but that one looked like it might have gone to sleep. 

"He sure is popular," she said, without any particular emphasis. 

"He win much last night?"

"Mr. Albert never wins," she said, sounding pleased about it. "You'll have to ask Miss Kerr for the details, if she decides to see you. Just wait in there, mister. You can touch the stool and nothing else. Don't go anywhere, or it'll be trouble." 

I went into the stock room, which had one high, dusty window and nothing in it I wanted to touch, including the stool. I wondered what exactly "stock room" was a euphemism for. 

Sam went back towards the front. She had left the door open; maybe she thought I got claustrophobic. 

"Are we waiting?" Tabby asked, pointedly swarming up to my shoulders and away from the stock room's furnishings. 

"Have you seen any better options?" 

"Yeah, same as you, that back door. It must lead out to an alley."

"It might be worth waiting to see if Kerr bites." 

"It might be worth getting something she wants, then coming back." 

Like many reasonable and successful men, I don't argue with myself when I'm right. But we bickered a little and ended up waiting about ten minutes anyway. Most of that time we could just hear a conversation going on somewhere, dominated by a woman's strident voice. At the end of ten minutes, a door opened fairly close by, and that same voice hollered, "Sam! Get the hell in here!" 

Sam came marching by the open doorway in an unhurried hurry I could only admire. She didn't even glance my way. 

"That sounds like she might be a while," I remarked.

"We know he was here last night. That'll have to do for now." 

I stepped out into the hall and beelined for the backdoor we'd spotted. There was a stack of cardboard boxes in front of it and a coating of dust in the strip of floor between the boxes and the door. It hadn't been opened in a while, and as I carefully shifted the boxes away I hoped it wouldn't make a noise opening. 

It didn't, but I nearly did.

"Found him." 

I was wiping the doorknob mechanically with my handkerchief and couldn't tell if Tabby or I had said it, or if we'd just both thought it. Thoughts can get pretty loud between a man and his dæmon. 

I stepped out onto the square foot of cement at the base of the steps leading up to the alley, shifted the boxes back as close as I could, and closed the door softly. Then I turned to look at the thing sprawled over the steps. 

I have seen more than my fair share of dead bodies, but you never get used to that first skin-crawling instant before your mind takes a person without a dæmon and files him away as a corpse. It was Nicolas de Saint-Aignan, all right, or at least it had been: black hair and a neat little black beard, the blue eyes open and clouded, the skin no longer smoothly tanned. The body, dressed in a too-flashy navy suit, was on its back, head first. A dark patch by the head that was probably blood, but the real damage was the broken neck. He'd been dead at least twelve hours. 

You'd have to be really unlucky to fall like that, and unlucky in a different way to be pushed. I had a guess which one had happened here. 

Tabby was on him in an instant, patting his clothes and nosing at his pockets. By the usual standards, a dæmon shouldn't touch another human even when he's dead, but we'd never seen the sense in that; besides, we were in a hurry, and they haven't come up with a way to pick up forensic evidence from a dæmon yet. 

The search turned up ID for Nick Albert, a blank piece of hotel stationery folded into quarters, a room key, a thick roll of Cs, maybe four or five large, and a place card with "Nick Albert" handwritten on it and the Columbia crown printed in blue in a corner. There were stacks of figures penciled and scratched out on the back of the card: real big numbers. Point to Hanna Brandt. 

There was no alethiometer. 

We replaced everything but the key, which I pocketed. 

There wasn't much room to get up the steps without disturbing him, but there's nothing like a cat for finding unlikely paths. The police would have no reason to complain I'd disturbed a crime scene, leaving aside the insignificant little detail of the key; there was no telling what the Magisterium might find suitable to complain about. 

Up in the alley, which was about three feet wide, carpeted in cigarette butts and disarmingly overshadowed with someone's washing on a line, I looked around to fill in an inconsistency. There: metal steps leading down from a door on the upper floor of the Seal and Club. Satisfied on that point, I took a last look down at the body. The alley was dim enough, and the steps were in deep shadow. They probably took in most of their supplies by water, witness the man with the manatee dæmon and his boxes, which explained why my escape route hadn't been used in so long, and why no one had happened upon Saint-Aignan already. 

I would have liked to grab Sam and deliver her to Wolfe to work over, as someone before me had obviously been asking about Mr. Albert; but that wasn't the priority. 

There was a brick wall across one end of the alley, the Mercer end. The other end had a sheet of wire pulled across at knee height, an obstacle for chickens maybe but not for me, and after dodging the coops and other things it wouldn't do to mention in the presence of law enforcement I met a slightly wider cross alley that spat me out onto Howard Street. So that was two directions, at least, the murderer could have gone when the deed was done, three if he (or she) had been up to climbing the brick wall. 

But I didn't have the first idea who the murderer was in the all the jumble of clashing interests converging on Saint-Aignan, and there was a big, golden detail to attend to.


	4. Chapter 4

MacLellan and Trinity had wanted Saint-Aignan found, and I'd found him. 

My confidence in that being a sufficient argument to collect our fee wasn't high, and anyhow, between a murder and a disappearance, the murder was what got my blood pumping every time. Wolfe might balk, but I could sell him, and I could count on him to sell Trinity Church in turn. 

I took a taxi back to the vicinity of the hotel and made two phone calls from a drugstore. First, to alert the police, anonymously, to the body lying behind the Seal and Club; I was not as satisfied as you might think to be making good at least part of my threat to the baby knights. Tabby did the talking, which was a trick a Brytisher had once called "not cricket," so we tried to do it as often as we could without wearing it out. With what was on Saint-Aignan, the police would be at the hotel in half an hour, give or take, to ransack his room, which didn't leave me much time. 

The second call took a couple minutes to reach the appropriate party. 

"This is Hanna Brandt speaking. Who is this?"

She was more formal on the phone.

"Friend of Nick Albert's. I need a favor, Miss Brandt." 

"A big favor?"

"Depends on your point of view. Can you arrange for a staff entrance to the hotel to be propped open in about five minutes? Nothing else." 

"Nick. Is he—?"

"It won't be good news," I said bluntly, "but I can't go into it now." 

"I'll do it. Fine." She'd rushed that out, and I heard her taking deep, shaking breaths afterwards. 

"Tell me where the door is, and don't be anywhere near after you've opened it. It'll get closed soon enough." 

She told me. "Five minutes." 

"Make it three." 

"You'll owe me." 

"Sure. We'll talk terms another time." 

She hadn't been brought up to owe anyone, but I'd figured she wouldn't mind having someone owe her. 

Hanna Brandt was as good as her word, on leaving the door open and on getting out of the way. I closed it behind me and went up the stairs to Saint-Aignan's room and used his key on it. 

I had ten, maybe fifteen minutes, keeping it safe, which was nothing like enough time for a thorough search, so I didn't try it. The question was, where would Saint-Aignan, who had been dutiful but evidence suggested not very bright, and, in keeping with Wolfe's bit of psychological analysis, had liked taking chances, have stashed something important? I tried to convince myself it might not be there at all, but deep down I was sure it had to be. 

It wasn't between the mattresses, or in the linings on his luggage, or taped to the underside of any of the furniture, or any of a handful of obvious places. I'd opened the closet to get at the suitcases, and I turned back to it, trying to decide what about it had struck me as funny. 

"You wouldn't need a coat like that here even in winter," Tabby called, having seen what I was up to. 

"Maybe he's sensitive," I muttered, but the immense sealskin coat with its fur-trimmed hood undoubtedly did not belong with the half-dozen examples of European tailoring hanging alongside it. The coat had enough pockets to stash your whole life in, but I got lucky, and it was in the first one I tried: a dark green silk drawstring bag containing something round and heavy. I opened the neck of the bag just enough to tilt it towards the light and get a glimpse of gold. Then I pulled the drawstring tight and stuffed the bag into my pants pocket. It was not a perfect fit, but it would stand up to a casual glance. 

I went through all the drawers, but there were no papers, no obvious signs of Saint-Aignan's real identity. On the nightstand there was a stack of detritus, more place cards with Columbia crowns and menus and a theater program from a show in Boston with two ticket stubs inside it dated two weeks back. 

I did not feel safe with a genuine Magisterium treasure in my pocket. Anyway, time was up. I left the way I'd come, walked around the block and hailed a taxi, giving the driver Wolfe's address. 

Tabby sat on the far side of the taxi's backseat, occasionally shooting me a sideways glance. The message was clear: we'll talk when you've worked out why you just did that. 

That was simple. There was no telling for sure who would have found it if I hadn't, but probably the police. They would have had all the time in the world to search that hotel room, and my opinion of their general competence is not that low. And I would have put down any odds you liked that the Magisterium wouldn't have paid us a nickel if the police had got their hands on that thing. Having it was dangerous, no doubt about that, but leaving it would have introduced too many unknowns and lost us our fee. Hell, we could always hand it over to Cramer later if Wolfe took it into his head that was the right thing to do. 

By the time we pulled up in front of the old brownstone, Tabby had condescended to sit beside me, and I was feeling better. It was just before five, so Wolfe was still upstairs with the orchids. 

I went straight to the office, sat in my chair, and shook out the silk bag onto my desk. The thing inside it was smaller and less elaborate than I had expected from an illustration of an alethiometer I had seen in one of Wolfe's books. It had the thirty-six tiny pictures around the edge, three steady needles, and one thin, wavering one. I picked it up in both hands and stared at it. Then I tried twiddling the wheels that made the steady hands move. 

"You won't get anything out of that," said Tabby, who had jumped up onto my desk and was looking at it every bit as expectantly as I was. But she was right all the same. I suppose I had expected to feel something, holding it, but I didn't. I put it back into its bag and tucked it away in a drawer. 

Fritz was waiting for me in the kitchen with a glass of milk. 

"Haven't they taken you to the dungeon yet, Archie?" he asked. 

"They haven't caught up with me," I muttered, sitting down at the counter to drink my milk. "How was he when he went upstairs?"

"In a foul mood. The Inspector came after you phoned, and they shouted at each other. What did you do to him?" 

"Who says I did anything?"

Fritz smiled and shook his head. I finished up my milk and went to climb the stairs to the plant rooms containing the ten-thousand orchids kept in luxury by Wolfe's earnings as a private detective.

I passed Theodore Horstmann, the plant nurse, and his dæmon, whose species I'll refrain from mentioning because while nature may make its mistakes I am under no obligation to clutter my account with them. 

Wolfe was in the potting room, pretending to be busy. Osanna, excused from a similar performance on account of not having thumbs, was sprawled over her special metal perch. Tabby hopped onto a bench by the tiger's head to continue whatever conversation they'd been having; I rarely heard much about that, since I got enough of Wolfe from the human part of him. 

I cleared my throat. 

Without looking up from his task, Wolfe growled, "Well?"

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's an emergency. We have a corpse on our hands and the police know about it because I told them."

He did look up then. "What is this flummery?"

"No flummery. Straight. As of 4:05 pm one alethiometrist was lying in the alley behind the Seal and Club with his neck snapped, and I'll take any odds you like he had help snapping it. I notified the police, anonymously, at 4:30. It is possible they have removed the body by now." 

"You have an opinion on how we should proceed, Archie." Not a question. 

"You're the boss," I said. 

He snorted bitterly. "Indeed?" He went to wash his hands, then settled himself on a stool. "Will the police find out you were at Miss Kerr's establishment?"

"Possibly. I gave my name and station, and they may give it up to get out from under. I don't know how Kerr operates, but it's a fact that corpses are embarrassing." 

"If we investigate the murder," he tried, "the police are sure to connect Nick Albert to the Magisterium. You certainly didn't succeed in convincing Inspector Cramer that I had not taken on Trinity Church as a client." 

"I can only work so many miracles," I snapped. "And of course they'll find out, but what do you care? It'll make Trinity that much more eager to get it taken care of quickly, and they'll cough up to get it done, anything you ask." 

"And are we in a position to guarantee we will take care of it quickly?"

I overlooked the sarcasm. "You want the works now?"

He was reaching for the phone. 

He had to wait through several rings. Then I heard, even at a distance, an out of breath voice answer. 

"Father MacLellan? Nero Wolfe. I have an update for you. I am afraid it isn't what you wanted. Nicolas de Saint-Aignan has been murdered. He—let me talk, please. He was found dead this afternoon on the premises of a gambling parlor....Manifestly he _was_ caught dead at one," Wolfe said sardonically. "Yes. The police have been notified. They are unlikely to link him with your organization immediately, but they will once they know that I am investigating the murder on your behalf. You were followed to my house this morning. I recommend that you reach out to the police at once with an offer to share information....I didn't catch that....Yes, I do expect you to retain me in this matter. Mr. Goodwin and I have collected information that will benefit ourselves and Trinity Church most if we continue our association....I understand. Consult him quickly. I'll be waiting to hear from you." He hung up. 

"How long before the armies of self-righteousness come battering down our door?" I asked. 

"Less time than I would like, and less than we may have counted on before the CCD became the guiding light of the Magisterium. Still, Trinity is a far-flung outpost and I have no higher opinion than you do of MacLellan's competence. We may reasonably expect an hour." He sighed and shifted around for a more comfortable position on the stool. "Report." 

It was an enormous concession for him to allow business to intrude on his time with the plants, but it was hard to see how he could have handled it otherwise. I went through all of it, Wolfe listening intently and only asking a couple of questions. When I got up to riffling Saint-Aignan's hotel room, I fished up the room key. "I considered leaving it on the night stand, but that wouldn't have done, would it?"

"No, indeed. MacLellan should have it."

"Great," I said, dropping it back into my pocket. "It's an inconvenient object. Oh, and that reminds me, I brought back a souvenir for you. I'd better put it in the safe before the pomp and circumstance gets here." 

Wolfe's eyes had been closed while he listened. He opened them wide and sat up straight. "Archie." 

"Yes, sir." 

I wasn't bothering to fight back my grin. 

"You didn't." He shook his head very slightly. "What am I saying? Of course you did. Do you have any idea of the imbroglio you have brought upon our heads?"

"Nope. I'm playing it by ear. And before you go working yourself into a lather, I had a couple of compelling reasons for acting as I did." 

"I'll ask you for them another time, in the event that I cannot decipher your motives on my own," he said coldly. "Where is this piece of contraband now?"

"In my desk." 

"Go put it in the safe at once!" 

That was the signal that I was dismissed. It was 5:53, nearly time for him to go down to the office, but by gum he turned back to the orchids, doing the thing properly. I turned and marched out. I made it out of the tropical room before I had to stop because Tabby hadn't followed me. She must have been trying to score a point off Osanna. I respected that, so I waited, edging ever so slightly forward against the pull of separation. 

She came running with a yowl. 

"Did we win?" I asked. 

" _I_ always win," she remarked condescendingly, shimmering on ahead. 

The old joke: how does the most egotistical person in the world live with having a dæmon as egotistical as himself? You know how it goes. Wolfe's household was an excellent case study. 

Back in the office, I had just finished locking the safe after putting the green silk bag into it when the doorbell rang. 

I rushed to get to it ahead of Fritz. If it was MacLellan, he was ahead of schedule, and if it wasn't, something had gone wrong, and either way I wanted to know before letting whoever it was cross the threshold.


	5. Chapter 5

Through the one-way glass panel in the front door, I saw that it was MacLellan, and he had brought a pal; or, from the way they were standing, the stranger at ease and MacLellan hovering between leaning towards and away from him, MacLellan’s pigeon tucking her head under his chin, more accurately, the pal had brought him, and MacLellan wasn’t thrilled about it. 

I sized up the newcomer: fifties, not tall, blond hair going silver, too much red in his complexion for the true patrician effect, but most of the features were of the appropriate shape and proportion. He looked patient and good-natured despite the priest’s getup. His dæmon was out of the frame. 

I opened the door and welcomed them. MacLellan introduced the almost patrician as Father Jackson Keith and me as myself. He had developed a stammer since I’d seen him last. Without further observation I couldn’t determine if it was over Saint-Aignan’s murder, Father Keith’s proximity, or just the time of day. My powers of observation were snatched up when Keith’s dæmon skulked in after him. 

Anyone who’s ever played at guessing a stranger’s dæmon, which is everyone, knows you’re wrong much more often than you’re right. That goes just as much for highly trained private detectives. For Keith I might have guessed a hawk or a garter snake, respectable statesman’s dæmons that would have gone with his silvery look; nothing doing. 

She was a jackal. Her head was too long, to accommodate a crocodile’s allotment of teeth; her coat was rusty, as if she’d been rolling around in blood; her legs were spindly and gave you the impression they might bend in unnatural places and directions. She looked like something unmentionable from the ocean deeps had put on a dog suit. 

Meanwhile Keith smiled and shook my hand competently, and I grinned and didn’t wince as Tabby’s claws dug into my shoulder. I heard Wolfe’s elevator begin to grumble its way down and knew that Osanna would be keeping pace with it on the stairs. I ushered the expanded Trinity delegation into the office and had them seated, Keith in the red leather chair despite my personal feelings, MacLellan at his elbow in one of the yellow ones, by the time Wolfe arrived. Say what you will about him, and I’ve said plenty, but watching him and Osanna make their way across the room, both making hardly a sound and far more graceful than you’d expect from their sizes, you couldn’t doubt that they were one person, and all that despite the fact that I had hardly ever seen them touch each other. I did wonder whether it was the same between them when no one else was there to see. 

I made the necessary introductions, Wolfe got himself adjusted in his chair, and Osanna took up a dignified half-sprawl beside him. Tabby, for a change, stuck close to me instead of going straight for her; we did not like that jackal. 

Wolfe began: “I take it from your unseemly haste in arriving that you have opted to engage me to find Nicolas de Saint-Aignan’s murderer, Father Keith?”

“No, Mr. Wolfe. We wanted to hear your arguments.” 

Keith had a mild voice, and when he spoke he kept his hand on his dæmon’s long head. I doubted that his “we” had been meant to include MacLellan.

“Indeed.” If Wolfe had noticed anything amiss with Keith and his jackal, he wasn’t letting on. However, he had also failed to offer drinks to the guests, and he was not usually inhospitable. “I have only one argument to present. The Magisterium has centuries of experience operating in a mode suited to its history, values, and environment. The methods it exercises have a certain brutal efficiency, but they are not ideal for investigating a murder in New York City.”

“Whereas your methods…” Keith waved a hand, implying or dismissing the rest. “I understood from my colleague that you have some reservations about God’s True Church, which I deeply regret. We will no evil, and if we do evil it is because our component parts have fallen to temptation. But perhaps we may dispense with the cynicism?”

“As you wish. Though we will not advance much if you continue to take offense at bare factual statements.” 

So there were two more who didn’t like each other, no surprise there. It was my bias showing, maybe, but I gave the point to Wolfe; Keith’s digression about evil and temptation had come over defensive. 

“Then let us advance in this way,” said Keith. “What do you and your subordinate know? Who killed Nicolas de Saint-Aignan?” 

Your subordinate. My colleague. I was getting the impression that MacLellan’s boss didn’t think names were worth mentioning unless they belonged to someone at least as important as he considered himself to be.

“Mr. Goodwin and I have several lines of inquiry to pursue,” said Wolfe. “I don’t typically share my process with clients. You will know when I achieve a result.” 

“I’ll want to know a few things right away,” said the representative of Trinity Church. His eyes were on Wolfe; his dæmon’s were on MacLellan. “Otherwise I won’t be able to proceed.” 

“Ask.”

“How—?“

“The alethiometer,” MacLellan broke in, then looked horrified at hearing his own voice. The pigeon was under his chin again, and everyone in the room could hear her faint rumble, comforting him and herself. 

Father Keith’s eyes, which were light brown and as mild as his voice, swept over to MacLellan. A muscle was twitching in the jackal’s flank. 

After about a hundred years had gone by that way, he said, quietly, “That’s a fair point.” Turning back to Wolfe: “Do you know where the alethiometer is?”

Give him credit, Wolfe didn’t hesitate. “I could hazard a guess, but it would be worse than unhelpful for you to hear it at this stage. It was not found on the body.” 

Keith swallowed that, and continued, “That leads back to what I was about to ask. I understand that the police have his body now. That is inconvenient. We would have preferred our own specialists to examine him. How did the police come to find the body first?”

“That’s simple,” said Wolfe, and while I was probably the only one who knew him well enough to detect the hint of malice in his voice, there was nothing subtle about Osanna lifting her head from where she had dropped it onto her paws and turning her eyes on the target. “Mr. Goodwin found the body in the course of investigating Saint-Aignan’s disappearance. He notified the police.” 

The representative of Trinity Church looked at me. He looked at MacLellan. He looked at Wolfe. He looked at Osanna. His neck was getting a real workout. “Oh. Yet you expect me to believe you will protect the Magisterium’s interests?”

“Indubitably. Perhaps you don’t understand how this works, sir. Mr. Goodwin and I have certain responsibilities that go along with our right to operate as private detectives. By fulfilling those responsibilities, we preserve our ability to work for you, and that protects your interests. Do you understand now, or should I be more explicit?”

There was a snap. We all looked at the jackal, whose dog suit was peeling off around the gums. The noise had been her jaws closing. 

Father Keith was smiling.

“I’d like to ask Father MacLellan a few questions now,” Wolfe said, as though nothing was the matter. 

“You like to play with fire, Mr. Wolfe,” Keith observed. I wished he would raise his voice, or get up and try to slug someone so I could throw him out. 

“Not at all,” Wolfe answered. “I merely wished to clarify a situation outside the realm of your expertise.” 

I don’t know how it would have gone then, only the doorbell rang. I was torn, afraid of I don’t know what if I left them alone, but Wolfe said, “Please see who it is, Archie,” and I went. Tabby stayed by the office door, which was just far enough away from the front to be uncomfortable, but I set my jaw against it. 

It was Cramer. I put on the bolt and opened the door a crack. 

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah. You can let me in to see Wolfe.” 

I waited. 

“What’s Nick Albert have to do with Trinity Church, then?”

“Please hold,” I said formally, shutting the door in his face. 

I did not run back to the office, though I may have hurried. There was no need. They were all still sitting there civilly enough, though the atmosphere was ripe for a storm. Better one of our own making, I thought. I caught Wolfe’s eye and raised a brow. He shrugged. 

“Inspector Cramer of Homicide here to see you, sir,” I announced. 

MacLellan and his pigeon jumped; the other one, looking more like a living, breathing human male than before, said with emphasis, “Very inconvenient,” and turned those mild eyes on Wolfe. 

“The police make a habit of badgering me,” Wolfe complained. “However, as I was just reiterating my advice to be open with them, I’ll add that this is the best opportunity you are likely to get of doing so. I know Inspector Cramer. He is an able officer of the law, and he will be as discreet as there is occasion to be if you show him you are willing to cooperate from the outset.” 

It might have done relations between Wolfe and Cramer some good if Cramer could have heard that assessment; then again, maybe not. 

Keith had made it plain that he suspected a setup, so if I hadn’t been on my guard against letting anything about that bird surprise me, I would have been surprised when he said, “Very well. You may proceed to act on our behalf. You know how to handle this person, I take it. You may tell him what he wants to know, in my presence.” 

“That’s proper,” said Wolfe. “Archie, ask Mr. Cramer to join us.” 

At the front door, I let the law in and said, “Ask me no questions. You’re invited to the council.” 

Cramer brushed past me, his mutt missing knocking into Tabby by about an inch, and it would’ve been head-on if Tabby hadn’t dodged. I didn’t think it was deliberate this time, and even if it had been I regretted that I couldn’t displace the man with the jackal dæmon to give Cramer his usual spot in the red chair. 

Wolfe took care of the introductions. Cramer eyed MacLellan and his colleague as if trying to decide whether he’d get better material out of them or Wolfe. When he was settled in the chair I’d pulled up for him and I was back at my desk, Wolfe presented him with an answer. 

“These gentlemen have agreed to let me explain the situation. I have advised them to cooperate with the police, and they have agreed.” 

“ _You_ advised?” Cramer rasped. "Is that true?" he asked the Trinity contingent. 

MacLellan, at a mild but unmistakably prompting look from his boos, managed, "It's true. Mr. Wolfe speaks for us." 

Cramer scowled. “What game are you playing, Wolfe?”

“No game. I am bowing to the realities of the situation, which are as follows: Nick Albert is an alias used by Nicolas de Saint-Aignan, a celebrated European scholar, who has been in this City to do sensitive, and, to the best of my knowledge, wholly legal, work for Trinity Church. He was living under an assumed name to escape molestation. Trinity chose to consult me when Saint-Aignan went missing, and now that he has been murdered—it is murder, incidentally?” 

“It’s murder,” Cramer said shortly. 

“Thank you. Now that he has been murdered, the situation has altered in character, but I will continue to investigate. Do you have any questions, Mr. Cramer?”

“How’d you find out he was dead? Is that what Goodwin was doing at the Seal and Club today?”

They _had_ given it up; I wondered how things had gone for Kerr and her knights when the police had showed up. 

“You know enough about that without my help,” Wolfe said. 

Cramer looked disgusted. “Did you know he was dead when you took the first job?”

“How could I? The possibility naturally occurred to me, as it would have to you under the circumstances. Now if there is nothing further, I need to speak to my clients in private. They will be happy to give you whatever information you need another time. Archie will give phone your office later for the details of your investigation.” 

Cramer blustered some, but it was just to show he wouldn’t knuckle under that easy. Once he had MacLellan’s contact information he allowed me to usher him out, then buttonholed me at the door. 

“All right, Goodwin, why’s Wolfe doing this?”

I shook myself free. “To get paid.” 

He tried again: “What’s wrong with those men?”

“I believe the technical name is religion, but I’m not an expert.” 

“God damnit, Goodwin, what’s he keeping back?”

“God, Inspector? Or Wolfe?” My eyes got very round. “Say, are you feeling all right?”

He growled, turned, and stomped down the steps with his dog dæmon loping after him. 

Back in the office, MacLellan’s stammer was getting worse, and he was fighting like hell to keep a lid on it. I began to feel sorry for him. 

“We—we n-n-never talked about his personal life. Much.” A long pause, during which I moved unobtrusively back to my chair. “There were—were women, but n–no names.” 

Wolfe didn’t press it; it was pretty clear MacLellan wouldn't have stood that. “In the last month, did he act in any way unusual?”

“He—he was happy,” MacLellan asserted. “That’s why this—the d-d-debt—it can’t b-be right.”

“But the gambling? Does it surprise you to learn that Saint-Aignan was a gambling man?”

"I've said—I didn't know. I c-can't believe it." MacLellan shook his head for emphasis, or just out of misery. The little rock dove was drooping on his shoulder. If I hadn’t still been keyed up from the disturbance earlier, Tabby would’ve gone over to sit by them a while. She has been known to have a calming effect on visitors from time to time. 

“Don’t feel too bad,” MacLellan’s brother in godliness said. “You didn’t know him well at all. You couldn’t have been expected to read his moods, or keep track of his unpleasing habits.” The jackal, who had been sitting a little too close to MacLellan’s chair, shifted and leapt, a little awkwardly, into the lap of the occupant of the red leather chair. “I’m satisfied overall, Mr. Wolfe, but there is one matter.” 

“Name it.” 

“I know what you said this morning, but I insist on settling the question of your fee now. I am authorized to spend only up to a point, and I would hate to haggle after the fact.” 

“Fifty thousand,” said Wolfe promptly. 

“Done,” said the silvery one. “It’s steep, but if your reputation is warranted, you’ll have earned it.” The jackal grinned, tongue lolling. It was pretty clear he would’ve paid twice that without a murmur, and I knew Wolfe had to be cursing himself. 

After a little more necessary business, including handing MacLellan Saint-Aignan’s hotel room key with instructions not to mention to the police where it had come from (and no mention on our part of my use of it), the clients departed. 

“ _He_ did it,” I announced when I had seen them out. “Him with the jackal.”

“Quite possibly,” Wolfe allowed. Fritz had just brought in beer, and he was pouring himself a glass. 

“You could’ve sent 'em packing.”

“Not with that alethiometer in our possession.” 

He wasn't looking at the safe, but Osanna was. I had a feeling they wanted to get a look at the thing without me around. 

“Yeah, about that. It won’t take Cramer long to find out exactly what kind of scholar Saint-Aignan was.” 

“Indeed. But by then we may be ready to present him with a solution.” He emptied his glass and set it down. “Archie. Bring me Jane Kerr.”

“What, now?”

“If it’s convenient.” 

I refused to ask what he wanted her for. 

“One lady mobster, coming right up.” 

Osanna let out a growl. She had sensitive ears and couldn’t stand the sound of haphazard vulgarisms.


	6. Chapter 6

The Seal and Club was lit up for business and Sam was at her post when I came down the steps at 7:15. Black's other knight had been swapped out for a rook: he was older than Sam and Bonny, close to my age though only chin-high to me, roughly square from the front, and ginger, with a button-eyed field mouse dæmon peeking out of his jacket pocket. Quiet, not as slow as he seemed, I diagnosed, and gave Sam my undivided attention, which was smart, because she was coming right at me with murder in her eyes and her turtle under her arm. 

She was too angry to speak; instead she aimed an uppercut at me with her free hand as soon as she was close enough. I stepped back to avoid it; she hadn't really meant it, anyhow. There was some evidence of good technique. 

"Hey, what's the matter with you?" I asked, not getting sore. I'd had time on the way down to unwind after the scene with the Trinity contingent. 

Sam sniffed angrily. 

"They've arrested Bonny, and it's all your fault," said her dæmon, who turned out to be female, which was almost as surprising as her speaking at all. 

"Who did?" I asked, aiming the question at both of them. "They charge him with anything?" 

Sam lowered her fist to her side and slowly unclenched it. "He had a fight with that Mr. Albert you were asking about—but it was weeks ago, and Bonny didn't hurt him! He didn't, I swear!" 

"All right, say I believe you. I can give you the name of a lawyer."

"Miss Kerr has her own lawyers! She takes care of her own!"

"Well, then what's the trouble? He'll be fine. What was the fight about?"

She pressed her lips into a line and glared. Meanwhile, a couple had come down the steps, and the rook with the field mouse held up a slab-like hand at them and rumbled, "Closed till nine."

The couple whined a little; he quelled them with a very few expert words, and they left. 

"That's your fault, too," Sam said. "It's the earliest Miss Kerr could get out of the police." 

"It's not half bad," I said sincerely. "The fight, Sam?" 

"Ask Miss Kerr." She passed a hand over her smooth-shaven scalp. "Come on. She's waiting for you."

The main room of the Seal and Club was dimly lit, what light there was glinting off brass fittings and channels of water cut into the floor. Most of one wall was taken up with a waterfall flowing into a narrow pool. The room felt larger than it was, and the half-sunken booths, as I knew from my only visit there years back, felt unexpectedly private. 

Jane Kerr was sitting at the bar. I'd never seen her in the flesh before, but it couldn't have been anyone else. She had a drink in one hand and was leaning forward on her forearms to declaim to the crag-faced bartender, who was the only other person there. 

"Excuse me," she said when I entered the room ahead of Sam. "My ride's here." She spoke in a nasal drawl, which carried well even when she wasn't shouting, as she had been earlier that afternoon while I waited in the stock room. She knocked back the drink, spun around on her stool, and shot up to her feet. It was an athletic performance from a woman who was at least sixty-five and looked like someone's old mother, despite her dangerously cut green evening gown and despite the fact that someone had once broken her nose for her. "Sorry I missed you earlier, Mr. Goodwin," she said, smiling sweetly. 

"Don't worry about it, Miss Kerr. I've heard you're a busy woman. Where were you expecting me to take you?"

"To see Nero Wolfe, isn't it? Sam will come with us. He'll want to question her, too." That's what she said, but I understood that she wanted Sam to attend her. Jane Kerr was the most democratic woman I've ever met who thought she was queen of the world, or at least of New York. 

"Fine by me, as long as her gun stays here." 

"That won't do. She'll hand it over at your door."

"It's a deal," I said.

"I wish you could just trust me. But all right. Sam, we're going for a ride. My coat." Sam hurried away. "Your arm, young man." 

I offered it up. She took it without leaning any of her weight on it, and we processioned to the door. 

Kerr was tall for a woman, wide at the shoulder and hip and pudgy all over. She had iron gray hair in a fancy updo, sharp black eyes, and a calculated slouch. I would have put down money that neither "Jane" nor "Kerr" were names she had been born with. At the door of the main room, her dæmon, who had been keeping pace with us in the channels, climbed out. He was a river otter, not a seal, which make for better puns but don't do so hot out of water. The otter did just fine. 

We paused in the entry hall so Sam could catch up, carrying a leather jacket that she held up for Kerr to shrug on. She had to put her turtle down for it. 

"You'll be all right on your own, Bob?" Sam asked her comrade the rook. 

"Yes'm," he said peaceably. 

"We'll be back soon," said Kerr, which coming from most people would've been funny. I was looking forward to seeing Wolfe go up against her. 

We had only a few steps to walk to the taxi I had waiting. Tabby had climbed to the ground for a better look at Kerr's otter, who propelled himself in bounds and shuffles at an impressive speed. I was a little worried for Sam, with her turtle drying up under her arm, and didn't take it personally when she all but shoved me out of the way when I went to hold the car door open for Kerr. 

I sat up front with the driver. No one spoke the whole way to Wolfe's house. At the door I held out my hand to Sam, who reluctantly handed over her gun. 

"Anything else I should be worried about?" I asked. 

"You won't get Sam to part with her blade," Kerr said fondly, "not for love or money." 

So I'd been right about the razor after all. I allowed that Sam had a right to keep it with her, as long as she made no move to use it, and we went in. 

"Jane Kerr of the Seal and Club as requested," I said grandly, leading that lady into the office on my arm. "And her employee, Sam." 

"A pleasure to have you here, Miss Kerr," said Wolfe, who hadn't, whatever interest he may have felt in Kerr, gotten to his feet. He frowned. "Is Sam all there is?"

"It's my name," said Sam, without heat. She was staring openly at Wolfe. 

"Would you be more comfortable with a tub of water for your dæmon?" he asked.

"Nah. She'll be fine." It was clearly a challenge. 

Wolfe shrugged; he'd explained once that he saw no reason to single out people with same-sex dæmons, who were, as a group, not noticeably different from any other set of people. Sam's sensitivity about it wasn't surprising; Wolfe was unique in many of his ideas. 

I'd waved Jane Kerr to the red leather chair, and she draped her jacket over the back and slumped into it: a queen, but a queen of a trash heap. When Sam was seated as well, and I had shut her gun into a drawer of my desk, Wolfe offered the pair of them refreshment. Kerr ordered scotch; Sam abstained. By the time I got back with Kerr's drink, she and Wolfe were deeply involved in being polite to each other. 

"—will certainly do my best not to incommode you, madam, though you are welcome to join us for dinner if this takes longer than you anticipate." 

"That's handsome of you, Mr. Wolfe," said Kerr with a little chuckle, echoed by the otter dæmon, who was prowling around at her feet. "I've heard your dinners aren't to be taken lightly. But I have things to be getting on with, and being grown-ups we can come straight to the point: Nick Albert. He's dead, and you want to know why." 

"That's correct. He owed you a great deal of money?"

She named a figure. Wolfe's brows went up, and I let out a whistle. 

"Nick Albert had a weakness," said Kerr, with an affected elaborate shrug that showed off the watery shimmer of her dress. "I'm a businesswoman. I have no trouble taking advantage of a man with a problem. In your line of work, I'm sure you understand that, Mr. Wolfe." 

"Indeed I do. However, Mr. Albert's problem would have done you no good if he lacked the resources to pay. At which point you would have resorted to methods of physical intimidation to extract what you were owed?"

Kerr's smile looked motherly, but it was only the way her face was arranged. "I won't lie. I was considering it. But then he paid back a pretty big chunk, all in cash, two weeks ago now. He swore up and down he'd have the _resources_ to pay back the rest soon. So I let him keep digging himself in deeper. And not just me," she added, obviously enjoying the reaction she was getting out of Wolfe, "Buddy Winslow at the Low-Hanging Fruit got five large off of Albert last week he thought he'd never see again. There may be others." 

"So Mr. Albert was about to come into a great deal of money. That is a valuable fact, madam. Thank you. Did you get any impression from him of where this money was to come from?"

"Afraid not. He was sure of it, though." 

"Did you have much occasion to speak to him?" 

Her slouch deepened. She was looking down at her drink when she answered. "The ones who're there every night, the desperate ones, I like to lay a groundwork before things get bad. Albert must've thought I just liked to hear him talk, which I didn't, if you think that's relevant."

"Why not?"

"Not really my line of country. A Frenchman, you must've heard." 

"Did a woman ever accompany him when he visited your establishment?"

Kerr looked momentarily surprised. She took a second to think it through, frowning. "No, he nearly always came alone. I only ever saw that little man with him, a couple times." 

Wolfe pounced on that. "What man?" 

"Big Church type." Kerr's black eyes flickered in thought. "Hair going thin, nervy-looking, winged rat for a dæmon." 

The unflattering description clearly belonged to Father Alexis MacLellan, who'd said he had known nothing about Saint-Aignan's gambling. I was impressed. Compared to his good but not great lies to us that morning, this one was a command performance. Maybe because it had been for his colleague's benefit and not ours. 

"What terms were they on?" Wolfe asked. He didn't look as surprised as I felt, but he might have been covering it up. Osanna was studiously calm, but then she usually was when Wolfe was grilling someone; it was unsettling, so helpful. 

"They got along all right," said Kerr, with another one of those elegant shrugs. She took a swallow of her scotch. "Sam? You ever see anything?" 

Sam sat up straight and answered eagerly, speaking mainly to Kerr with occasional sidewise glances at Wolfe. "Mr. Albert liked to joke with him. The Big Church guy... He might've enjoyed it, he might not have. Hard to tell, we didn't exactly get chummy." She flashed a smile, my way this time. "I made him uncomfortable."

"I bet," I answered. 

Wolfe and I looked at each other, and I could tell we were having the same thought: MacLellan, leaving out that he was Saint-Aignan's contact; MacLellan, not missing a beat, choosing speed over discretion when it came to finding him; MacLellan, hardly able to get a word out earlier in the evening, with the news of Saint-Aignan's death still fresh; MacLellan, as it turned out, lying to his bosses and to us about Saint-Aignan's distasteful habits. He'd more than liked him. There was motive for you.

"Excuse me, sir," I added, "but I'd like to follow up a point. Bonny—Boniface." I tried to say it like he had. "There was a fight?"

"Not a fight," Kerr answered, quelling Sam with a slight gesture. "Boniface Guidry is another one of my enforcers, if you like. Someone saw him getting physical with Albert a couple weeks back, squealed to the police when they went around the neighborhood collecting dirt—it was on my orders, just a threat. As I think I mentioned, I was considering resorting to _methods_. There was nothing personal about it. Boniface is a sweet boy. He doesn't like to fight." 

"He had a license for the piece," Sam added, her hand going automatically to her armpit where her gun wasn't. "Miss Kerr made sure we had licenses." 

"A wise precaution," said Wolfe. 

"Is there anything else?" Kerr asked impatiently. "Believe it or not, I didn't kill him, and no more did any of my people. I pick 'em better than that. If you keep me any longer, I'll be tempted to take offense at your Mr. Goodwin's landing me in shit with the cops." 

Wolfe made a face; that kind of language irritated him. "You are intelligent enough to appreciate that it was unavoidable, madam, and please believe that I fully value your cooperation, which is as complete as it is unexpected." 

Kerr snorted. "Unexpected, as in, am I being so goddamn helpful to get you off my back?"

"It's a possible interpretation."

"I don't need to borrow trouble with the cops. You're trying to clear this up, I'm with you. I know enough about you, Wolfe, to be pretty sure you won't go for a frame-up. I also don't think you're stupid."

"I hope not, madam. Your candor is very welcome. If you and yours are indeed blameless in this, I will do my best to keep the police from troubling you further. I hope, however, to detain you for a last series of questions. Mr. Albert was at the Seal and Club last night?" 

Kerr looked bored. "We covered all this with the police." 

"Humor me." 

"He was there. Showed up a little after eight-thirty. Sam?"

"He went right for the tables," said Sam. "Bob, he was on floor duty, he says Mr. Albert got up around eleven, and then he didn't see him anymore." 

"And neither did anyone else, as far as we know," said Kerr. "Like I said, the police have been through all that." 

Wolfe said, "Did anyone unusual come into the establishment yesterday evening, before or after Albert arrived?" 

Sam shrugged. "No one I noticed." 

"But one of them asked about Albert? Isn't that what you told Mr. Goodwin earlier?"

"That wasn't last night," Sam said quickly. 

Jane Kerr was looking at her narrowly. This was news to her. 

"There were two of them, two men," said Sam, rushing over her words. "The first was three weeks, maybe a month ago. He offered me a tenner for anything I could give him about Mr. Albert. I didn't really have anything, Miss Kerr had just taken me off waiting and put me on security when Mr. Albert started coming, but I strung it out." 

"You took the money?" Kerr asked. Her voice had gone flat. 

Sam looked mortified. The turtle, sitting in her lap, pulled her head in. "Well, why not, ma'am?" 

"If I may intervene," said Wolfe. "This is an internal matter best handled somewhere other than in my office. Here I ask the questions."

Kerr gave her head a toss, then forced herself to smile. "Go on."

"What was he like, this man?" Wolfe asked. 

"Just ordinary," said Sam miserably. "I don't remember anymore. White. Not tall, not short. His dæmon was some kind of dog? Maybe a coyote? Like that."

I leapt to an immediate conclusion, then leapt right back to safety; I could have scared up a dozen dog dæmons just going around our block, probably, and the fact that Sam didn't remember anything special about this one made it less likely to have been the jackal I was thinking of. Still. 

"And the second man?"

"That wasn't me. I mean, I didn't see him, Bonny did. Three nights ago." She was getting more and more agitated, and her milky-paleness was going chalky. The tough-guy voice was finally showing cracks. I thought I detected a brogue beneath it. "He told me about it. The man asked how many nights Mr. Albert was there, what time he left usually. Bonny says he knows better than to say anything. You want anything else, you can get Bonny out of jail." 

"No doubt your employer has that in hand," Wolfe commented, "and I may indeed need to speak to Mr. Guidry before this is over." 

"Surely we've given you enough to be getting on with, Wolfe," said Kerr. Her otter had stopped roaming and was sitting up against a leg of her chair, watching Sam. 

"Very well, madam. Thank you for your cooperation. And you as well, Sam."

He stood when they did. Showing them out, I returned Sam's gun to her and gave her shoulder a pat for morale. She looked at me blankly, then turned to follow her idol down the steps.

I'd half expected Wolfe to send me to fetch MacLellan for the pot, but it was no such thing. It was past time for dinner, and we dined. The lobster soup—langoustine tails boiled in coconut milk and drizzled with Fritz's homemade avocado oil—did not suffer for the delay. Business was banished from the table; one of Wolfe's rules, though I could tell it was making him as uncomfortable as it was making me, after all those revelations. Osanna sat in a perfect indifferent circle to prove how much it wasn't bothering them, and Tabby, not to be outdone, sat in an equally indifferent circle on Osanna's back, all of us listening to Wolfe discoursing on notable works written about same-sex dæmons. That shows just how far his mind was from the case. 

"We must establish how many other people Saint-Aignan owed money to, and whether any of them know where he planned to get it," Wolfe said, back in the office over coffee. 

"I can do that in the morning." 

"No. You'll be going to Trinity Church to observe MacLellan in his natural habitat, and to speak to anyone who many have come into contact with Saint-Aignan. We must clear up this question of the money. We'll get Saul to go around the gambling parlors. It's a waste of his talents, but there is no telling what difficulties may arise, and Saul will deal with them best." 

I entirely agreed, both that it would be a walk in the park for Saul Panzer, and that he was the only person, aside from myself, who I would trust to do it. Somewhere along the line, during our session with Keith the creep I suppose, my view of this case had swung around closer to Wolfe's: I wanted it handled, the sooner and tidier, the better. 

"Get him here in the morning," Wolfe said. "I'll brief him." 

"Right. Should I call ahead to Trinity, or just drop in?"

"The latter. I would rather MacLellan did not have any time to prepare for the assault." 

I waited for him to add something else, but he just leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed and heaved a massive sigh. 

"Any ideas there?" I asked finally. "He couldn't have been giving our stiff the money?" 

Wolfe opened his eyes to slits. "It's unlikely. That is, I would not be surprised to learn that MacLellan had covered debts for Saint-Aignan in the past, now that we know he was aware of Saint-Aignan's habit and can infer that affection would have prompted him to do what was in his powers. But as for the larger sums, it is outside the realm of possibility that an ordinary Trinity priest, with no other apparent source of income, would have access to that much money. Archie." He paused. "I'm aware that after his superior's disgraceful display earlier, you are inclined to champion MacLellan, but—"

"Nuts," I broke in. "Going to remind me he's still a Magisterium flunkey who lied to your face? I'm not about to forget it. I'll give him the third degree, no problem. But I don't like him for the murder." 

"A sensible position." 

I gave him a suspicious look. There had been altogether too much meaning in that statement, but he didn't follow it up, and I didn't ask. There were no more alarms that night. I phoned Saul to let him know we had work for him, then got down to typing up a report of the day's interviews, from my notes and from memory. Tabby sat on my shoulder, as she usually did when I typed, claiming she was checking my spelling. The nerve.


	7. Chapter 7

Over breakfast I noted with satisfaction that Saint-Aignan's identity hadn't found its way into the papers. The murder of Nick Albert was reported but didn't even merit the front page. I also read in the _Gazette_ that Harvey Lesperance had been knocking the stuffing out of Matthew Davenport in a town hall debate around the time I'd been discovering Saint-Aignan's body; it was encouraging that my unfriendliness at lunch hadn't put Lesperance off his game. There was a photogram of the two of them shaking hands after the debate. Lesperance, looking dignified and mayoral, was smiling; Davenport, looking like a department store dummy on a hot day, was showing his teeth, not very different from the squirrel dæmon on his shoulder.

Saul came down from Wolfe's room just before nine. I'd tripped downstairs too late to catch him on his way in. 

"Morning, Archie. Tabby." Saul Panzer is one of the few people I've met who can make addressing your dæmon that way sound natural and polite. "I hear you'll be having all the fun today." 

"Yeah, we hear the nuns are a treat," Tabby answered, nosing Saul's Rokhl, a spotted wild dog with a sleek greyhound look you'd never have guessed from Saul's exterior. 

"You just be careful, son," Saul said. "And I'll take two-hundred dollars grease money, please."

"You've got it." 

We went, the four of us, out into the hall and into the office. I opened the safe. I paused. 

Tabby must have seen it a half-second before I did, because when I looked down to meet her eyes, she was ready with a whispered remark: "I guess he wanted to sleep with it under his pillow." 

"I hope it gave him nightmares," I muttered. The silk bag with the alethiometer in it was gone. That could be a problem, or not, in another five minutes. First, I got Saul's money for him, recorded it, locked the safe, and handed the money over. He'd hung back by the office door, but for that I couldn't expect my momentary lapse to have gone unnoticed. 

"Anything the matter?" he asked. Rokhl stood at his side looking bright-eyed and alert and just a touch otherworldly. 

"Nothing for you to worry about," I said. I thought I did it all right. 

Saul didn't look convinced, but he nodded slowly. I wondered what Wolfe had told him about our article of contraband, if anything, but I knew better than to ask. It was understood that some things were need to know, and I didn't need to. "I'll come flying to your rescue when they try to burn you as a witch." 

"Don't bother," I said. "Just carry on in my name." 

When Saul had left, I rang the precinct to find out what the police had on Saint-Aignan. Pickings were slim: broken neck, as I'd spotted, and a cut on the back of the head that wouldn't have been fatal on its own. There was also tissue under his nails and bruises on his forearms: there'd been a fight. 

I buzzed the plant rooms on the house phone. 

"What?"

"That was a neat magic trick."

He grunted, not denying it. 

I relaxed. He had just been testing my reflexes. "You'll have to tell me how you did it sometime. Any joy?"

"I hardly have the requisite training to make sense of the thing." 

"Yeah, but if old S-A could do it, I don't see why you couldn't." 

"Archie. Is it absolutely necessary for you to use that uncouth abbreviation?"

"Not absolutely, no." I grinned. "I'll be going over to frighten the pigeons now." 

"Just the one pigeon."

"Yeah. You want to hear what I got from the cops?" 

I repeated it to him, and he responded with a grunt. I hung up. 

It was no time of day to take the subway downtown, so I gave up the potential spiritual benefit of the ant's-eye view of Trinity Church you get on the Wall Street approach and caught a taxi on Ninth. I spent the trip toting up suspects. Tabby and I had had a little back and forth about it before bed, but we always fell asleep too quickly for those human-to-dæmon heart-to-hearts you get in a certain kind of school story. 

I climbed out of the taxi on Broadway just above the church itself and walked down, keeping to the inner sidewalk to avoid the late rush of jaded office denizens weaving through the cars between them and Wall Street and the early rush of tourists dangling their toes off the sidewalk getting up the nerve to do the same. The church clock struck ten as I passed the front door, exactly the time my watch had. I didn't stop; some of the Magisterium's priest-bureaucrats still had offices in the church itself, but MacLellan was among the bulk that had been farmed out to surrounding office buildings owned by Trinity. Wolfe had shown me a list the night before of all the buildings Trinity owned, and it amounted easily to half of lower Manhattan. That in mind, I paused at the corner of Rector Street to aim a cordial nod at 76 Broadway, a less lacy and Gothic building than its neighbors, proudly displaying a ten-foot tall banner bearing the Columbia crown over its front entrance. That took guts, even for the second most powerful of the Ivies. 

MacLellan was important enough to rate the building just across Rector. I took the elevator up to the first of two floors devoted to Magisterium business—Trinity maintained its pile renting out all the rest. The lobby was expensively furnished but unexpectedly minimal, as if someone had remembered that Pope Calvin's reforms had aimed to create a less venial institution than the old Church. Green and cream were the main colors, and white marble featured heavily. 

First I got past the buttoned-up guardian seated behind the solid marble block of the reception desk, who kept repeating that Father MacLellan hadn't come in yet, and did I want to leave a message?

I leaned my elbows on the block, which would have been uncomfortably high for anyone shorter than me. "How'd you end up with this job, anyway?" I asked, because she seemed nice, considering. 

"I answered an ad. They're not all bad," she said damningly, showing a bit of life at last. Her hedgehog dæmon uncurled a little on the vast blotter in front of her. 

"They don't have to be," I said. "So. MacLellan's assistant?"

"You could try Mr. Howard," she said, blinking. 

I did try Mr. Howard, and about a dozen assorted Misters and Misses after that, in various offices that didn't strike me as especially religious; with each one I did a little dance, trying to figure out how commonly known the Saint-Aignan secret was. Finally I had some success with a Sister, Sister Ersebet (I asked her to spell it for me, and she frowningly obliged). She was about eighty, with a suspiciously dragon-like iguana dæmon, both of them mean as hell, if I may use the expression about a Benedictine, which she informed me she was. She complained that I was making a ruckus, then locked me into a chilly filing room after dumping some files on a table in front of me.

"I'm surprised she didn't chain you to it," Tabby said, hopping up onto the table. 

"Don't joke about it," I said. "I'm not in the mood." 

"I was right about the nuns, though." 

The files contained MacLellan's notes on Saint-Aignan's readings, or some of them, anyway. Pages had been removed without evident rhyme or reason, presumably to keep me from penetrating some deep Magisterium secrets. From what was left I formed a poor opinion of MacLellan's talents as a researcher; his questions were not to the point, and his records of the answers wouldn't have passed muster in high school English. Either he was desperately incompetent, or he hadn't had his mind on the job. 

Even through the layers of obscurity, I could tell Wolfe had been right: Trinity had requisitioned Saint-Aignan from Mother Church to help with the election. It was all disappointingly prosaic, not a hint of brimstone from beginning to end. 

All told, Misters and Misses and unhelpful papers, I'd been at it two hours when Sister Ersebet came to let me out and told me that MacLellan still hadn't shown his face. She waved me out into the hall, then creaked out, "This persistent young man is looking for Father MacLellan, too." She wasn't talking to me, but to a man standing looking out a window nearby. 

He turned, and I recognized him: smooth brown hair, too much of it for his scalp; smooth face, too, every feature straight off the assembly line; the squirrel dæmon on his shoulder was the most distinctive thing about him, with her red plume of tail. Matthew Davenport, in the offices of the Magisterium; well, well. 

"Uncivil of Father MacLellan to go AWOL when he's in demand," I said. "What did you want with him, Mr. Davenport?"

"Oh!" He looked pleased. "You know me. And you are...?"

"Archie Goodwin." 

He nodded blankly, holding out his hand to be shaken. His professional smile showed he knew how to do it, the picture in the morning paper notwithstanding. Lesperance may or may not actually have heard of me earlier than five minutes before Cramer had delivered me to him; Davenport was clueless. 

"Listen, Mr. Goodwin," he started, then glanced at Sister Ersebet, still standing in the hall, leaning on her practical wooden stick like she had a natural right to grow into the floor where she stood. Davenport started to sidle off, and I, detecting symptoms of an oncoming confidence, sidled after him, flashing a grin back at the nun. The maybe-a-dragon raised the spikes along its spine and grinned back. "Listen, Mr. Goodwin," he said again, in hushed tones; probably he thought it was good practice to repeat people's names back at them so they stuck. "Do you know anything about this..." The volume dropped another notch. "...this Nick Albert who's been killed? No one will say anything to me, they keep telling me to ask Father MacLellan, but I hardly know the man, and he's nowhere to be found. I mean—is it true? About Albert?"

"That he had another name and belonged to the Magisterium? Yeah, that's straight." I was offhand; I did not elaborate. "How did you hear about it?"

"I have...an acquaintance with an ear to the ground for Trinity gossip. This is big." He attempted to take me by the elbow, looking only slightly put out when I politely shrugged him off. "How about getting an early lunch with me, Mr. Goodwin?"

Oh, boy, I thought, lunch with two eleventh district candidates in as many days, and it wasn't even my assembly district. There's nothing like being a private detective for getting out and meeting people, unless of course you happen to be Nero Wolfe. 

There wasn't anything better to do, aside from poking down stepwells looking for MacLellan's corpse, too, and I was curious about how the fare would compare to yesterday's.

I accepted the invitation and followed Davenport out the back of the building to Trinity Place and an eatery off the arcade that made up the furthest reaching arm of the trade complex that was practically in Trinity's backyard. Davenport had nice manners; he didn't bring up business until after we'd ordered. True, he had asked for his steak well done, but I wasn't Wolfe and could let it go. 

"So is he really—was he this alethiometrist? Saint...what was it?" 

"Saint-Aignan," I said. I thought I was getting better at saying it like Wolfe and MacLellan did. "I like S-A better."

"But what was he doing here?"

"Look, Mr. Davenport, I'm really not sure I should be telling you that." 

"Of course, of course....Do they know who killed him? The newspaper account mentioned an arrest at the Seal and Club. But wasn't it a political murder, then?"

"I imagine that's the working theory," I said, "but of course they'd have to do some asking around, the Seal and Club being what it is. If you don't mind me making a personal remark, why are you so interested? It seems to mean something to you." 

He ran his fingertips over his smooth, plentiful hair. "It's embarrassing." He sure looked embarrassed. The squirrel was clinging to his upper arm like a tree branch, her red tail half over her little rodenty face. "I mean, it _was_ embarrassing, before. Now...my God, I don't know now. It's all different. You're heard of my aunt, Mr. Goodwin?"

I had. Everyone had. Mina Dekker Davenport was the wealthiest of Columbia University's trustees, tireless organizer and tyrant, the Upper West Side's answer to Jane Kerr. Relations between aunt and nephew could not have been warm; Columbia University had its own agenda, but it agreed with City Hall where Trinity Church was concerned. 

"What about her?"

"It's worse than embarrassing, it's shameful and pathetic. My aunt—she was going to marry him." 

"Who?"

"Nick Albert. Only he wasn't really Nick Albert, was he." 

I didn't pretend to be any more or less astonished than I was. I gawked. "She must be thirty years older than him." 

"Don't I know it," Davenport said bitterly. "She fell for him like a ton of bricks, stupid old woman....There's a lot of good in this country, we're younger and fresher than Europe, but it was a mistake to stray from the old values. Women inheriting their husbands' property." He shook his head. "Yes, sir, we've certainly strayed." 

I looked sympathetic. He continued piling on the rhetoric, easy and expansive; I supposed he'd been too nervous at the debate the day before, with Harvey Lesperance and his mayoral smile and downright presidential gull dæmon in sight the whole time. 

I didn't mind nodding and making noises at the right intervals, whatever he was spewing; he had handed me a fact I could take back to Wolfe. Listening to drivel wasn't much to that. Nicolas de Saint-Aignan engaged to marry Mina Dekker Davenport—no wonder his money troubles had been coming to an end, with one of the City's richest women lining up to back him. Poor sap. He wouldn't be marrying anyone now. 

The Columbia place cards made sense now, and S-A's dropping Hanna Brandt and vanishing from all my usual hang-outs. As for the program from the show in Boston—that was Harvard territory through and through; Mrs. Davenport had probably gone to represent Columbia at a gathering of Ivy leading lights and wanted a plus one. I wondered how she, or Davenport, or both of them, had been keeping it out of the papers. 

Two further questions: where was Mrs. Davenport's money going when she died, and had she known who Nick Albert really was? It was even odds by my reckoning; the Ivies had been known to outdo City Hall for intelligence gathering. 

Davenport had hit the border control bullet point on his platform; he asked me if I'd ever been out of the City. 

"I have the honor to be born in the great City-state of Cincinnati," I said comfortably, which of course set him off on the hard work those good people over in Cincinnati and the other border City-states were doing defending our sovereign territory against the Texans, the Nations, and all other comers. 

The food wasn't anything to write home about, and on the whole I wasn't sorry when, only a few bites in, Tabby let out a low hiss and I looked up to see who else but Father Jackson Keith, silvery and mild and smiling, with the jackal dogging his steps, coming towards our booth.


	8. Chapter 8

He stopped beside the booth and inclined his head in Davenport's direction, giving him the benefit of the gentle smile. "Matthew, hello. Always a pleasure." Before Davenport could get out a response, Keith was going on. "Mr. Goodwin, I'm so glad I caught up with you. I understand you were looking for my colleague. You have something to report?"

"Some more questions, actually."

"Perhaps I will do instead, then, if you'd care to join me in my office? My colleague has retreated to perform solitary devotions. It would appear his soul is not in perfect order." He clicked his tongue pityingly. "I hate to take you away from your meal, but the rest of my day is packed. I can barely spare you the next hour as it is."

Solitary devotion sounded nearly as uncomfortable as my last theory about what had happened to MacLellan. Though it proved to be a mistake, I figured my news would keep until I'd seen what Keith wanted. He hadn't looked a bit put out at hearing that I had nothing new for him. 

"Sure, I'll come along. Mr. Davenport has been telling me some fascinating things. You don't mind if I look you up soon?" I asked, grinning at Davenport. Wolfe would want to squeeze him for facts about the engagement. 

"Not at all. Looking forward to it." A brief professional smile moved his lips. He had hardly torn his eyes away from Keith since he'd entered the restaurant. At least he had the sense to be nervous. 

"That's all very good," said Keith. "So sorry to intrude, Matthew. I had no idea you and Mr. Goodwin were acquainted."

Davenport didn't answer at once. His eyes flickered down to Keith's jackal, better behaved today, or better disguised. "We met in your offices, Jackson. I'm afraid I've been boring Mr. Goodwin. Preaching to the choir, you might say."

The jackal coughed, and Keith said, "Really. Well, another time you can get better acquainted." 

Davenport didn't clock the insult to his perspicacity, as far as I could see. We left him looking after us with a concerned ridge in his brow as we headed out of the restaurant and across the footbridge over Trinity Place linking the arcade to the church's back door. 

"What were you two really talking about?" Keith asked. 

"Oh, this and that. He'd picked up some scraps about our friend Nick Albert. I was getting it straight for him, just enough so he wouldn't go blabbing to anyone else." 

"How lucky for us that you met him, then." 

"Nothing but the best for Mr. Wolfe's clients. Say, I hope Father MacLellan's retreat hasn't been brought on by this case?" 

The jackal made a sound that was half snort, half snarl, and wholly unsettling. With his eyes on the door he was pushing open, Father Keith said, "It's rather hard to explain these things to people outside the faith. But he'll be so pleased to hear you were concerned." 

Just inside the door, he started down a spiral staircase with wooden banisters carved into Gothic arches. It opened onto a corridor with white-washed walls and evenly lit ceiling panels. The air smelled of cold stone, very different from the incense and varnish smell of the upstairs. Tabby hopped down from my shoulder to the tiled floor to get the layout from that angle. 

Keith went on through the tiled and white-washed corridor, past closed doors with name plaques on them, and down a slight incline into another corridor, this one bare stone lit by sconces on the walls. There were doors, heavy dark wood, in one wall, and on the other, squares carved with initials, dates, and animal pictograms. I'd heard about the crypts under Trinity, where wealthy benefactors who couldn't publicize their connection to the Magisterium even in death were interred in what to them was the only consecrated ground in the city. I hadn't expected them to be so close to the priest-bureaucrats' offices, but then I supposed it was only natural they wouldn't mind that sort of thing. 

"It's not as morbid as it seems," Keith began, in a light-hearted, distracted voice, "having our offices down here. It's an economical use of space. Only you do feel the trains going by, in some rooms." 

It hit me then that I'd goofed. It was too late to help it, but I salvaged a bit of pride, at least. Twice Keith had referred to me by my name, and I hadn't attached any special meaning to it. I'd been feeling comfortable, having found out where the money was coming from, and I'd started thinking of Keith as nothing but a particularly disagreeable client, when of course he was worse than that. 

When I had my epiphany, I stopped and tensed for a fight. Tabby, who'd been keeping a couple of steps ahead, lagged back, widening the distance between us and Keith. Too late. He must have given a signal—maybe it was that he'd stopped talking. 

The door I'd just walked past flew open. Two men with large canine dæmons snarling beside them barreled out. I was between them and Keith. They didn't move for a breath, and neither did I. 

The jackal lunged. She was closer than we'd thought, and too fast. All her too many teeth were at Tabby's throat. 

My dæmon thrashed and kicked at the jackal's flank. She called my name in warning, and then I had my own fight to concentrate on. Those two thugs knew their business. I kept my head enough to know I didn't stand a chance; fighting with your dæmon trapped is always a losing proposition, however good you are. There was just the bare possibility, if I bought her enough time, she would get an advantage over the jackal. Then we'd have been in business. 

I had plenty of time to go over it, afterwards. I might, if I'd understood at once what they had planned, have managed it by putting my back to the wall of carvings. As it was, though I landed a few solid hits, between the two of them the thugs crowded me into the room they'd come out of. I stumbled back, caught my balance, but meanwhile the door slammed shut. 

I hollered. Despite every professional instinct telling me it was useless I banged on the door, which was reinforced with metal on this side. From the other side, I heard Tabby yowl. Then another door slamming. 

After the flash of blind panic, during which I was sure they'd killed us, I put it together: they'd stashed us in adjoining rooms, separated just enough to yank on the link without severing it. Just the sort of neat, practical torture you expect from masters of the craft like the Magisterium. 

I admit it: I wasn't doing too great. I got my breath back after a while, but I couldn't do anything about the tight feeling in my chest. I filled up my head reviewing all the signs I'd missed and all the ways the fight could have gone better. That helped enough that I really noticed what I'd been logging mechanically: the details of the room—the cell—they'd stuck me in. The floor and walls were bare stone; there was one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, the decorative resort of interrogators of limited imaginative powers everywhere. Against one wall there was a single metal chair. Naturally it was the wall opposite the one I was keeping close to: the one nearest an essential part of myself. 

They'd done it right, the bastards. Any further apart and I'd have been no use for answering questions; any closer wouldn't have made the necessary impression. At this distance, it was like a perpetually unscratchable, slightly painful itch. You could get your thoughts around it, but you couldn't stop noticing it. And that was ignoring the pure wrongness of being alone, really alone, the way humans were never meant to be. 

But witches do it all the time, I imagined Tabby saying, and if they can put up with it, so can we. 

That helped, a little. 

As long as I could, I kept thinking. There were certain avenues of thought besides the obvious that Saint-Aignan's engagement to Mina Dekker Davenport opened up: was Davenport concerned about his inheritance, if any? did it represent a defection on Saint-Aignan's part, or had anyone thought it did? had any of the interested parties known about it? 

This line of thought only worked up to a point. The longer I was in there the more hopeless I felt, and without a dæmon to bounce it off of, calling yourself a prize idiot gets to you pretty quickly. I wondered if they even meant to question me; maybe the whole point was to leave me to rot. I could see a piece of work like Keith deciding that inconveniencing Wolfe that way was a suitable revenge for his rudeness. 

I had taken my gun along with me, as I always did when I went out errands concerning murder cases: it wouldn't have done me any good in the close quarters of the corridor, and in the cell it wasn't any more use. I also had my watch, in perfect working order, for company. It told me that three hours had passed by the time anyone came for me. I'd been playing a game with myself, trying to keep from looking at it too often, because every time I looked I couldn't believe how little the minute hand had moved; my usually impeccable sense of time had gone on strike. 

Keith was alone, aside from his jackal. I took a step towards him, my hand forming into a fist. Then I thought better of it and stepped back, nodding. 

He smiled, eyes crinkling with benignity. "Have you had a comfortable wait, Mr. Goodwin?"

He couldn't have said anything that sounded more like a Magisterium villain in a dime novel. All right, I thought, that's how we're playing it. 

I shrugged. "Not really. Your accommodations leave something to be desired. Can I offer you a seat, Father Keith?"

He looked at the chair. Then he looked at me; there was a momentary hesitation there, as if it pained him to see a man without his dæmon, even though he'd arranged for it. "I assume from the fact that you haven't attacked me that you understand the set-up. If you hurt me in any way, well—your dæmon put up a good fight against Atalanta, but I wouldn't give much for her chances against two fresh dæmons now." 

Atalanta. The jackal. Even thinking her name left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. It wasn't that people never mentioned their dæmons' names to strangers; it was that his mentioning it under these circumstances couldn't mean anything good. A threat, or an insult, or a careless slip, which could only have happened if there was no reason to take care. 

"Actually, I wanted to give you a chance to explain your rudeness and apologize for tossing me in here. But I suppose your way works. Now we know where we are." 

While he chewed on that, I shot a glance at the jackal. It was hard to be sure with the rusty red of her coat, but it looked like there were gouges, barely healed, crisscrossing her left flank. One eye was swollen partly shut. A good fight, indeed. 

"I wanted, Mr. Goodwin, to have a chat with you, and arranged conditions so you would be inclined to listen to me." 

I raised a brow at him. 

"The alethiometer." His voice was quiet; the usual play at warmth had gone out of it. "It's missing, and we have more resources than you know of to look for it. I know that your employer knows where it is. His offensiveness at our interview last night would have been madness otherwise. Where is it?"

I gave him the wide, guileless eyes the best I could. "What Mr. Wolfe knows or doesn't know—I assume you do mean Nero Wolfe, by the way? Your little eccentricity about people's names makes things confusing—what Mr. Wolfe knows or doesn't know isn't really in my purview. I just know what he tells me, and he hasn't said a word about where your expensive little toy might be." 

Keith's lip curled up; so did the jackal's. It made it worse, I noticed in a detached sort of way, to watch another man with his dæmon, even a lopsided pair like those two. 

"I see you're going to make this difficult," he said, still very quiet and now also very flat. 

I don't need to bore or disgust you with the rest of it. I wouldn't sit, so we both stood, on average at a distance of three feet from each other. There were no implements; he didn't lay a finger on me; the whole point was that he didn't have to. 

Mostly he stuck to asking about the alethiometer, again and again. He wanted to hear, at one point, about how I'd found Saint-Aignan's body. That was safe to give to him, with some editing, which I managed efficiently but without my customary flair for bamboozling official questioners. He had a few questions about Jane Kerr and her people, but only as a matter of course. He was more interested in what I knew about a spy in Trinity's ranks; that kept him busy for a while and gave me a break, since I didn't have the least clue what he was talking about and didn't care. Keith clearly did care. He was getting annoyed; next he tried the soft and sensitive angle, telling me that whatever loyalty I had to Wolfe couldn't be worth the trouble, and the Magisterium could set me up, and couldn't I just give him something, some scrap, to save myself? I have found this approach funny on many previous occasions. Under the circumstances, I lost my temper. Keith clammed up and left for a while. Then he returned, smiling and silvery once more, and it was back to the alethiometer question. 

While he'd been gone, I'd succumbed to the tactical error of thinking that Wolfe, knowing where I'd gone, would eventually send someone to look for me when I neither phoned in nor came home.


	9. Chapter 9

I don't know how long I could have kept it up, after that, but I didn't have to find out. 

"What's that?"

It was the jackal speaking. She had a high, breathy voice. Her head was up, her ears twitching. 

"Only a train," Keith said, but he looked attentive, too. 

"No," she said, and by then I could hear it: a hum more like excited voices than a passing train, and then sound of stomping feet coming closer.

The door opened; Keith hadn't locked it when he came in, so there was nothing theatrical about it, or there shouldn't have been. 

"Goodwin? Archie? You in there?"

Never have I been so relieved to hear the uncouth, manly accents of Sergeant Purley Stebbins, or to see his absurdly small bear dæmon, who habitually travelled on his back, peering over his shoulder. There was also a uniformed cop with him. They were between me and Keith in a moment, which made the cell feel crowded. 

"What's the meaning of—" Keith began in his chilliest voice. 

"Right here, Purley," I called at the same time. My voice didn't sound quite right. While Purley waved what I took for a warrant under Keith's nose, and some more commotion went on out in the hall, I cleared my throat. "It's about time." 

"Don't blame us, blame Wolfe," he answered. 

That gave Keith his opening. "What is the meaning of this, officer?" 

"The meaning," answered Inspector Cramer, standing just outside the door, "is that you're committing a flagrant violation of Trinity's charter with the City, and coming in and relieving you of your unwilling guest is the least of what I can do. That piece of paper my sergeant's handed you has all the details, since apparently you've let them slip your mind." There was a lot more of this, all delivered at top volume, all very cutting, I have no doubt, and I was appropriately flattered by the effort. But Tabby had slipped past Cramer's ankles and flown up to my shoulder, so I missed some. We are not one of your demonstrative nestling in the breast human and dæmon pairs, but all the same Stebbins was good enough to turn his back for a moment. Then he asked over his shoulder if I was okay. 

"Let's get out of this dump, and I will be. The atmosphere doesn't seem to agree with me." 

He barked a laugh. "Same old Archie. I don't know why we bothered." He offered me his shoulder to lean on. After a delicate moment, I decided I could risk forgoing the honor. 

Cramer was through reading Keith the riot act. Keith had stopped trying to get a word in edgewise and was simply staring, his light brown eyes anything but mild, the muscles in his cheeks quivering faintly. 

At Cramer's signal we departed, a second uniform joining us at the door. They'd come in style, all right. The offices along the tiled and white-washed corridor all stood open, excited or scared of confused faces peeking out of them as we passed. We climbed the spiral stairs and exited by the back door. Stebbins clapped me on the arm, a mark of the depth of his concern, and said, "Go wait in the car." 

There were two cars, in fact, but one was a squad car, and I spared Stebbins the embarrassment of specifying by picking the other one. Cramer, meanwhile, had gone to exchange remarks with an old man in ceremonial regalia, who'd been waiting at the door. I watched the exchange become heated as I climbed into the back of the car. The passenger's seat was occupied, and the occupant's gull dæmon was taking up most of the overhead space inside. He turned around to look at me. 

"Ran into your opponent earlier, Assemblyman Lesperance," I told him. 

"Yeah?" Harvey Lesperance grinned. He was wearing a dark green velvet suit and no tie, his pale pink shirt open at the neck; I deduced that he didn't expect to have his picture taken on this outing. "What did you make of him?"

"Full of hot air. Less discretion than you'd expect from a lawyer. It's usually their only selling point. What are you doing here?"

He snorted. "Not much of a lawyer. Are you unharmed, Mr. Goodwin?"

"Why? You planning on leading the charge against Trinity if they've hurt a hair on my head?"

"I'll have to bring it up with my campaign manager," he answered, for all the world sincerely, and turned back to the front. His dæmon flapped up a miniature storm and landed on the dashboard. 

Cramer, having finished his encore oration and leaving the old man spluttering on the sidewalk, got behind the wheel. His mutt climbed over his legs and settled in at his side. 

An urgent question occurred to me. I blame my condition for the fact that I blurted it out at once. "What did Wolfe give you for this?"

Cramer growled and answered like it hurt him: "A reminder of his long history of cooperation with the police, and an earful and a half about defending the rights of our citizens from nefarious organizations that act like they've above the law, etcetera. Your boss can talk." 

That was indisputable. I wasn't completely satisfied with this answer but indicated that I was, and we rolled. 

Call it delayed reaction or release of tension or what you want, but once we got moving I found I wasn't feeling all that snappy. So while Cramer and Lesperance, mostly the latter, chatted about the election, I sat in the back of the car with Tabby on my knee, each one of her perfect, needle-sharp claws poking holes in my pants and digging into my skin. Cramer tried talking to me a couple of times, and I answered. He gave up trying. 

My hands had stopped shaking by the time we reached the brownstone. 

I tried to lose my escort at the front door while Fritz took the chain off to let us in, but Cramer said, "Nothing doing, son. We're stepping in to have a word with Wolfe." So that I had quite the honor guard when I walked into the office. 

It was a little after six, so Wolfe was waiting there for us. He took one look at me and nodded at Cramer and Lesperance. "Gentlemen, I thank you for your assistance, though for Mr. Cramer it was no more than his duty and acceded to with sufficiently ill grace. If you would now oblige me by leaving us alone?"

Lesperance, mildly enough, began: "But you said..." He trailed off, looking puzzled. 

"If you are reviewing my words," Wolfe said severely, "you are realizing that I made no promises and offered no deals. Indeed, sir, it would have been highly improper for me to make any, or for you to accept them, isn't that so?"

The gull dæmon fluffed up her feathers and set to smoothing them meticulously. Lesperance looked tolerant. 

"There's gratitude for you," Cramer muttered. "And did I get so much as a thank you out of Goodwin? No I did not."

"I'm relieved to hear it," Wolfe said. "Good day, Mr. Cramer. Assemblyman." 

Cramer grumbled and Lesperance smoldered, but they went, Fritz escorting them. 

"Have you eaten?" Wolfe asked when we were alone. "You missed lunch." 

"I had a bite." 

"Are you sure? Fritz could bring something." 

"I'll wait for dinner." A pause. "Thanks." 

Osanna had coaxed Tabby away from where she had been pressed against my legs, and was whispering to her, too quietly for me to hear even in the sudden silence. I stood where I was. 

Finally, Wolfe said, "Well?"

I gave it a moment before I spoke. 

"Yeah. It wasn't a complete waste of time. I found out about the money, anyway. Turns out Saint-Aignan was engaged." 

Wolfe nodded. "To Mrs. Mina Dekker Davenport."

I exploded. 

"Well, if you know that already, what the hell do you need me for!" 

"I hardly think we have time to go into that now," Wolfe said, sounding amused. "Mrs. Davenport phoned while you were out to make an urgent appointment—to discuss the murder of her fiancé, she said. If she is better than the average woman at keeping time, she'll be here at half past six. Sit down." 

The thought crossed my mind that Wolfe had only stirred up the cavalry to snatch me from the jaws of organized religion so he wouldn't have to talk to a woman alone. 

"I guess she's coming to look for a replacement," I said. "I'll be sure to recommend you. What good's a husband who walks into a butcher's hammer like a dumb side of beef? I'm sure you'll be very happy. No doubt she thinks it's a point of pride to set a young thing up in luxury, so it's not like you'd have to work. And I saw a painting of her once, she's a real looker. Of course that painting was done when she was nineteen, and sixty years may have wrought their changes, but—"

"Sit down and shut up!"

Osanna had continued her campaign, meanwhile. She was now determinedly grooming Tabby, and as Tabby had remarked on prior occasions, you haven't been groomed until you've had a tiger do it. 

I sat. 

"Better," Wolfe said. "I deny that getting caught in a Magisterium mousetrap reflects in any way on your abilities, Archie. Stop sulking. Instead you might tell me if there's anything urgent I should know before Mrs. Davenport gets here." 

"Her nephew thinks she's a stupid old woman who fell head over heels for Nick Albert. He knows about the engagement, obviously, and he'd heard about Albert being Saint-Aignan before I told him, though he didn't seem too sure. If you take my advice, you'll find a way to stitch him up for the murder. He's delightful enough. MacLellan's in retreat, or missing, or dead somewhere. He takes bad notes. His soul isn't right, if you buy that." 

"I'm not surprised." 

"Yeah. The man with the jackal figures there's a traitor in his ranks, and I don't think he was blowing smoke. A stool pigeon, you think?"

"It might well be. Anything else?"

"It'll keep," I said, and the doorbell rang, early, as it happened. Osanna and Tabby separated. It was one thing for people to see the fights; the rest of it—that was personal.

So the parade through Nero Wolfe's office of elderly ladies who'd pay someone to shoot you as soon as look at you continued. 

I really had seen a painting of Miss Mina Dekker, in the private collection of a client. The painting showed her in full riding dress and in fact on horseback in D'Angola Square Park. As I'd said, she'd been a looker: black-haired and pale-faced and slender, with a small serious mouth and ramrod straight posture and large, deep-set gray eyes that the same artist had wanted to use for a subversive painting of a male martyr, only the parents had objected. 

She was skinny and white-haired now, but still upright, and she still had the eyes, though with the folds of drooping skin around them you could only tell when she opened them wide at you. She did that as soon as she'd been seated in the red leather chair, which would have held three of her. Her dæmon, famously a bantam rooster, perched on the arm; with her barely coming in at five feet, they were well matched for size. First she gave me a piercing look; then she switched it over to Wolfe. 

He offered her refreshment; she took Tokay. Fritz brought her a glass of the precious 98 and along with it two bottles of beer for Wolfe and a glass of water (and a concerned look, which I returned with a wink) for me. I was ready for something stronger by then but needed my faculties intact for the interview. Mina Dekker Davenport spoke first, as though picking up a conversation she'd just left off. She had a high voice, what I would have called a chirp in a woman a third of her age, and enunciated too carefully. 

"When I come to think of it, it's astonishing that this is the first time our paths have crossed, Mr. Wolfe." 

"There's no reason for them to have crossed before, madam. You are in the habit, I believe, of hiring more pedestrian detectives to meet your needs—such as when you engaged Mr. Bascom's men to investigate your intended." 

"You're well-informed. That's good." She smiled. 

Wolfe did not. "Let's understand each other, Mrs. Davenport. You wish to pay me to find out who murdered your fiancé?"

"My—fiancé. Yes." She gave another, craftier smile. "Nick—that is, Nicolas de Saint-Aignan." 

Wolfe nodded. "It would indeed have been astonishing for me to find that you had been unaware of his true identity. My compliments to you and your college. Do you also know who killed him?"

"One of those Trinity leeches, to keep him from marrying me." 

"Do you have evidence of this?"

"None. Finding it would be your job." 

"I see. How do you account for the fact that representatives of Trinity Church engaged me to investigate first M. de Saint-Aignan's disappearance and subsequently his murder?"

So we were opening the bag for her. 

Mrs. Davenport took the news calmly and didn't have to think about it for more than the time it took to blink. "The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. That's always the way with these people. Their coordination isn't worth speaking of, they get ahead by force of arms and nothing more. Why are we sparring, Mr. Wolfe, instead of coming to the point?" 

"Mrs. Davenport, I apologize. I was attempting to establish a surmise I had made: that you are not a stupid woman. Your nephew, Mr. Matthew Davenport, suggested that you were. Mr. Goodwin, to whom he made the suggestion, doubted it, and so did I. Now I am convinced that Mr. Davenport was mistaken." 

"That's because Matthew is rather stupid himself. So—they hired you to investigate the murder? I didn't know that. Thank you. It doesn't change what I think, but it has happened that I've been wrong. Will you accept your fee from me instead? Surely that would be more comfortable than taking it from the Magisterium, and I have money to spare." 

"I have no such scruples as you ascribe to me, happily. I also have no way of knowing that you didn't murder your fiancé yourself—or hire another to do it for you. As you say, money is no object." 

Mrs. Davenport leaned forward, hinging at the hips rather than curving at the spine. The rooster skipped forward a few inches on the chair arm. "My motive?" I could tell she was opening those martyr's eyes wide at Wolfe. 

"M. de Saint-Aignan was popular with women. You were jealous." 

"Oh dear." She gave a dry chuckle, covering her mouth with her hand. The rooster burbled a laugh as well. "I didn't care who he was or wasn't sleeping with. There was no question of that, I hope. As far as Nick was concerned, he wanted me for my money, and I wanted him to tote around to events, like a fashionable accessory. It was a rational arrangement. Mr. Goodwin, I gather, has spoken to Matthew? That wouldn't have been his view, I suppose." 

"Not hardly," I agreed. "I don't think he sees too clearly." 

She gave me a faint nod. There was no doubt that old lady had been handling men all her life. 

Wolfe was going on. "Discounting jealousy, we are left with politics. Posit this: Saint-Aignan learned that you had rumbled his identity. Content to be married for his decorative qualities, he disdained to be chosen for his abilities and position; a quixotic position for a man to hold, but not impossible. He called off the engagement. If you couldn't have his services, then neither should the Magisterium—you had him killed. Is that clear, or too convoluted?"

"It's admirably conceived, but it isn't true. And I didn't hunt him, you know—he courted me. Real, Old World courtship." The derisive little sniff, the rooster's dipping and brushing away gesture: we were meant to understand that that had been a dig at Saint-Aignan. 

"All the same," Wolfe answered, "I still prefer to collect my fee from the Magisterium. Indeed I intend to raise it from what I originally asked; I have been considerably inconvenienced by Trinity's machinations. In the meantime, madam, you can assist my inquiry by telling me the terms of your will."

"Oh, I see." She shook her head slightly. "I don't think there's anything in that, but it won't hurt you to know. My husband was a very wealthy man—I had barely anything of my own, it was my family's connections I brought to the marriage. When my husband died, leaving aside minor bequests, his fortune was left to me outright. I was then thirty-one years old. I've spent freely since, but with good luck and better financial advisors I've grown my capital, so that it stands now in the neighborhood of four million. My will leaves a quarter million to each of my dead sister's three children. Another quarter million is divided thus: a hundred fifty thousand split among charitable causes and personal gifts, and a hundred thousand to Matthew. The residue goes to my college. At least, not _my_ college—it's less than twenty years since Columbia first accepted female students. What an arms race that was among the Ivies. But you know what I mean." 

"Is Mr. Davenport aware of these provisions?" 

"He isn't. At least, I haven't told him. I keep meaning to, but I've developed a superstitious dread about it. The money isn't very much, but if he needed it badly, he might..." She paused, and the rooster let out a cluck. "Mere nerves." 

"Perhaps," Wolfe allowed. "Did you intend to alter these provisions upon your marriage?" 

"Certainly not. I would have paid Nick's debts as long as he ran them up and lavished gifts on him—it would have been an excellent arrangement for the decade or so that remains of my life. I hoped in the meanwhile to teach him some financial responsibility—though if a man hasn't learned it at forty-eight, it isn't likely to come after, is it?" She did the wide-eyed trick again, with a little tilt of the head that must have knocked 'em flat around when that painting was done; the hell of it was that it was still pretty potent. 

Wolfe scowled. "No. I suppose it isn't." 

"You're wondering, probably, why I even care. Why I don't give it up as a loss and let it go?" 

"The thought had crossed my mind." 

"I'm involved, like it or no. It may well have been my fault Nick was killed. I owe it to him to see it's cleared up. He was a nice boy, though very foolish."

"Admirable, though hopelessly sentimental. I'll see to it, though not for your sake." 

He kept her another half-hour, collecting background on her and Davenport and all her dealings with Saint-Aignan. The only fact of note was that she had instructed Saint-Aignan specifically to break it off with Hanna Brandt, the self-sufficient maid I owed a favor to. Mrs. Davenport's explanation? It showed ill-breeding to take up with hotel staff. You can't beat that. 

"Are we getting anywhere?" I asked when she'd gone. 

Wolfe didn't answer. His face was grimmer than anything we'd heard seemed to account for. 

"If you're working on sticking Davenport with it, I must say it looks bleak. He might have killed her for the hundred grand—she certainly thinks he's capable of it, and who am I to argue?—but even assuming he knew about it, he didn't kill her. No one did." 

Not a peep. 

"I'd sure like to know what Saint-Aignan had. He never struck me as anything out of the ordinary, but here's Mina Dekker Davenport calling him a nice boy and getting all worked up about finding his murderer—which you must admit is gushing praise from her. Then there's Hanna Brandt, who was all broken up when it was just a question of his being missing, and then there's MacLellan....I can't say I see what the fuss was about." 

Nothing. I'd lost him. 

"I'll just go upstairs and freshen up before dinner, shall I?"

He grunted. I went.


	10. Chapter 10

As I was buttoning a clean shirt, the phone rang in my room. 

"Archie Goodwin," I told it. 

"Oh! Mr. Goodwin, that _is_ you!"

The voice was so distressed that I almost didn't recognize it. 

"Is that Bonny? You made bail, then?"

"Yes, it's Boniface, sir. I'm calling from the hospital—it's Sam." 

He sure hadn't called me Mr. Goodwin or sir before. My grip on the receiver tightened. 

"What happened?" 

"Someone—some maniac—tried to cut her head off. I just left the foyer for a minute..." He hiccupped. "She's out cold. Terpsichore keeps waking up, just a little, tryin' to talk, but she can't..." A fierce sniffle. "Miss Kerr said I should tell you. And you wanted to ask me something, but I can't talk now, I have to get back to Sam, they're letting me sit—" 

"No, stay on the line. A couple of minutes, Bonny, come on. A man asked you about Nick Albert, a few nights back. What was he like?"

"I don't remember. I never remember faces too good, and it was dark. He just wanted to know when Mr. Albert showed up most nights, that was all. Please, I have to—"

I felt like a monster, and Tabby was getting worked up, pawing at the floor, but I tried one more question. "His dæmon?"

"I don't... Something small, a rat or something." 

"That'll do. You've done fine." I thought about a maniac trying to cut Sam's throat—cut off her head, like Bonny had said. Sam, the girl who looked like she knew her way around a cutthroat razor—it didn't seem fair at all. "Look, kid, anyone asks you, you don't know anything about anything. Got it? And don't go anywhere alone."

"All right, Mr. Goodwin. Thank you." He hung up. 

I finished dressing, and Tabby and I hurtled downstairs to catch Wolfe before he sat down to the table and business became off limits. We were just in time. 

Osanna saw us first and asked, "What's the matter with you?" She and Wolfe paused at the dining room door. 

I answered. "Oh, nothing much. Just that someone tried to murder Sam from the Seal and Club. She's unconscious and in the hospital now." I gave him my phone call with Bonny verbatim, since there wasn't much of it. 

"Bah. A witless display." He grunted. "After dinner you'll find out the details of the attack from the police." 

"So it's our guy?"

"Do you imagine anyone else would be desperate enough to attack one of Miss Kerr's enforcers under those conditions?"

"But the rat dæmon?"

"Even assuming that man was the murderer himself, it was dark, and I doubt Mr. Guidry was looking closely."

"And why try to kill Sam instead of Bonny?"

"We'll see about that later." Plaintively, he added, "Couldn't it have waited until we had dined?"

"Not without spoiling my appetite it couldn't," I said. That was shameless. Of course to him that was an unanswerable argument, and he knew that I knew that—oh, skip it.

Dinner was an unusually somber affair, though I couldn't say with a clear conscience that either of our appetites suffered. 

You'd think that by then I'd had enough excitement for one day, or even three. That I was entitled to a nice, quiet evening spent needling Wolfe, with an early bedtime and a night of untroubled slumber, but no. We were having coffee, in the office so I could ring the precinct and inform myself about the attack on Sam. It had happened around six, in the foyer of the Seal and Club. No one had seen anything, though her gun had discharged twice; the assailant had taken the weapon with him, or more likely had dumped it straight into a canal. It was enough to make you scream. 

Wolfe had listened in on his extension. When we had both hung up, he heaved a sigh. "Archie. We couldn't have prevented this." 

"Yes, sir. I'm sure you're right." 

He made a face at my tone and took some coffee. The doorbell rang. 

I was about to make a remark when I saw Osanna raise her head and lay her ears back flat. They'd left me in the dark about this visit, whatever it was, and I wasn't going to like it: for further proof, Osanna got to her feet, stalked over the two feet separating her from Tabby and settled down again. Close enough to restrain if necessary. 

"Something I ought to know?" I asked. 

Before Wolfe had to answer, Fritz ushered Father Jackson Keith into the room. 

The only reason I didn't throw anything was that I couldn't make up my mind where to aim. 

He wasn't looking very silvery or mild. His face was unusually pale. It made the jackal look less fearsome, not more. 

Wolfe spoke. "I won't thank you for coming, sir, and I won't ask you to sit down. You can understand my attitude, I think. However, as I said on the phone, this meeting is unavoidable." 

Keith's eyes slid over me without interest; probably he tortured so many people he'd already forgotten where he'd last seen me. "I have other matters to occupy my attention. Did you get me here so you could be rude to me?" he asked Wolfe. 

"Only in part," Wolfe answered. "I wanted to return your property to you directly, so there would be no question." He reached into a drawer of his desk and pulled out the green silk bag that had contained the alethiometer; he emptied it onto the desk to show that it still did. The thing sat there, golden and shining and silent. 

Of course it was clear what had happened. While I'd been upstairs, he'd phoned Keith and pulled the alethiometer out of wherever he'd stashed it. I glared at him. Tabby had her claws in Osanna's foreleg, which the tiger was putting up with stoically—they'd been prepared for that sort of reaction. 

"And how long have you had this?" Keith asked, taking a step forward. 

Wolfe held up a palm so peremptorily that Keith froze in his tracks. "Immaterial. It's intact and I am restoring it to you. I will say that Mr. Goodwin found and retrieved it, which, under the circumstances, was the only satisfactory course of action. His quick thinking is the only reason I am now able to return the alethiometer to you. I know better than to expect you to be grateful to either one of us; still less will I subject us to the fruitless exercise of extracting your thanks, however grudging. Instead I will be asking for twice the fee I originally named—that is, for a hundred thousand dollars—and I expect you to pay it without a murmur at the earliest opportunity. Make no mistake, I will be seeking legal remedy if you don't comply, which may result in a loss for me but will surely result in humiliation for you. The formality of producing the murderer is still before us, but you will admit that it's a formality only. I further expect that, when you leave my house tonight, you won't return. All future dealings between us will be conducted through an intermediary. Is that all understood?"

Keith's not really patrician face was white, and spasms were shooting through his cheek muscles; his lips were pinched and blue-tinged. He advanced to Wolfe's desk, where he had no choice but to put the alethiometer into its bag himself. The jackal, tongue hanging out of her long head, approached Osanna and Tabby. She snapped her jaws. Osanna flowed to her feet and let loose a roar. 

The jackal skipped back to cower behind Keith's legs. I could hear him breathing heavily as he got the silk bag hidden away in a pocket. Tabby, during this whole scene, had sat calmly washing herself with an eye on the jackal. 

"You'll regret that," Keith said unconvincingly. 

"Get out of my house!"

Wolfe could roar as well as his dæmon; Father Keith got. 

Notwithstanding the pandering, I was ready to boil. I got to my feet. 

Wolfe knew me well enough to sense the storm coming. "It had to be done. It would have availed nothing to give you notice, Archie." 

"Yes, sir. I'd have had a loaded gun ready for him. I acknowledge that. But I won't acknowledge that it was necessary to give him what he wanted." 

"Pfui. Sit back down, and I'll explain." 

I remained standing. "You can explain first. I warn you, I've had a long day and I'm not feeling very reasonable." 

"Has it not occurred to you yet to wonder what has shaken Father Keith out of his complacency?"

"Go ahead, enlighten me." 

Wolfe shook his head in frustration. "Archie. Surely you understand that Trinity Church has sunk itself with this latest scandal. It has sparred with City Hall in the past; it has pushed the boundaries of its charter by subterfuge and sometimes by violence, but it has never before been raided by the police for holding prisoner a citizen of the City and of the Union. The charter will be renegotiated at the very least, more likely nullified outright. That at least is the course I counselled to Assemblyman Lesperance, and he understands the advantages it would bring him to pursue it." 

"Excuse me, I don't follow. If Trinity's drowning, why do you have to be so goddamn diplomatic towards it?"

"You aren't thinking. Trinity Church is a branch, a leaf. The parent tree—"

"The Magisterium in Geneva, I know, miles away and busy making war on—"

"—the parent tree is far mightier and will be furious enough to find its last grip on New York pried open. The loss of an alethiometer, when there are credible rumors that another was lost less than a decade ago—and remember there are only six in the whole world—would be an embarrassment too great to bear. The Magisterium itself, with all its forces, would be forced to act. You haven't seen what its war engine can do—I have, when I was a boy and a young man. The Magisterium has only grown stronger since then. New York might, conceivably, withstand the clash, but it would be a terrible blow to it and its allies. I won't bring that upon this City to assuage my wounded pride, or yours." 

"Go on, Archie, sit down." 

That was Tabby—and I must have been being even more unreasonable than I'd thought, if she'd decided to weigh in on Wolfe's side. I sat, muttering, "Traitor," under my breath. 

"Go climb a tree," Tabby answered placidly, hopping up onto my knee. 

"Thank you," I told Wolfe ironically, "for the explanation." 

Realizing that I needed a moment to compose myself, he filled me in on the results of Saul's inquiries that morning. Saint-Aignan's other creditors hadn't been any better informed about his impending felicity than Jane Kerr. Saul had sniffed out further traces of the detectives acting for Mrs. Davenport, but none of the stranger who had questioned Bonny. 

"So we know who did it, do we?" I asked eventually. 

"I believe I do," Wolfe answered. "I expect to receive confirmation when I have your report." He gestured, prompting. 

It took a while. The morning in the file room, the nun, the lunch with Davenport, Keith's appearance, my own idiocy in getting captured. I got Tabby to give her account of our stay at Trinity Church. Not one of the four of us enjoyed that recitation, and I suspected that Osanna had already heard some of it, and repeated it to Wolfe. 

He listened to all of it without asking a single question. When I was through, he leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed. His lips started pushing in and out; Osanna, stretched on her side, echoed the gesture with her twitching ears. That meant he was doing serious work: so he really did have something. I went and poured myself a well-earned bourbon and sat at my desk sipping it. 

Fifteen minutes later, Wolfe had finished the lip exercise. He didn't share his conclusions, and I couldn't see what he'd got from what I'd told him, however I wracked my brain. Maybe you can; but remember how much easier you have it than I did.


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning, I was pouring my second cup of coffee and listening to Fritz on the phone, deflecting yet another newspaper reporter: "Mr. Goodwin is not available for comment, I'm afraid. Neither is Mr. Wolfe. No, sir, I'm very sorry." And so on. Some murmurs about Trinity being at loggerheads with the NYPD had appeared in the morning papers, but they weren't front page news, and the gist I'd got from Fritz's end of half a dozen conversations was that no one wanted to risk going to print with what everyone was saying before they had confirmation from the key players. So Father Keith was on reprieve for the moment. When Fritz answered yet another call and started his spiel with, "No, I'm sorry, Mr. Cohen," I considered taking the phone from him and opening the bag a little. Lon Cohen of the _Gazette_ was a friend, and he had done enough good for us that he merited better than a rubber stamp brush-off. I hadn't quite made up my mind when the doorbell rang. 

I motioned to Fritz that I would see to it. 

Eight hours of sleep had by no means given me a fresh appetite for the kind of surprises this case kept dishing out, so there was no spring in my step when I went up to the door to look through the one way glass panel. Nor did my heart sing when I saw Father Alexis MacLellan waiting on the doorstep, dressed in rumpled civilian clothing—a gray suit that had once been socially acceptable and a hat with the brim pulled down—and looking like he'd been on his last legs some time ago and was now keeping upright I didn't know how. 

"Oh. You're not dead," I observed, opening the door. 

"I'm as surprised by that as you are, Mr. Goodwin," he said. Boy, did he sound miserable. The stammer wasn't in evidence, though. "I need help." 

Wolfe had said I was championing MacLellan because I'd heard Keith bully him; all right, so maybe he had a point. 

"I'll see what I can do," I said, "but I warn you that Mr. Wolfe won't be visible until eleven, and then he's not going to want to see you." 

"I don't care. I have to try." 

I took him to the office and pulled up a yellow chair for him by my desk. He looked like he'd shrunk in the forty-eight or so hours since I'd first seen him. His pigeon dæmon hadn't once lifted herself from his shoulder. 

"What's the matter?" I asked, sitting down in my chair and swiveling towards him.

"Haven't you guessed? Didn't you wonder?"

Impatiently, I said, "We won't get into what I have and haven't guessed. Quit being mysterious." 

"Why should the police have had me followed? I'm nobody." 

When he put it that way, I supposed it should have occurred to me before. Probably it had occurred to Wolfe. Anyhow I'd got there, between his inadequate notes on Saint-Aignan's alethiometer readings and Keith's questions about a traitor. "Oh, let me guess. You're Tammany's spy in the Magisterium." 

Of course he didn't look surprised; he was pretty well past any surprises and most of the way into the grave. He raised his hand to his shoulder so the pigeon could step onto it then lowered his hand to his lap, where she drooped, wings splayed as if broken. 

Tabby, from the end of my desk, made a noise towards her, but that got no response. 

"I don't get it," I announced. "I really don't." 

He perked up a little. "I couldn't stand what the Church had become. When I was approached by a man from City Hall....I was terrified, but I couldn't refuse. Not because—I mean, it was a compromising place for him to find me in, but that wasn't it. I knew that it was the right thing to do." 

He was hopeless.

I was stern. "I've got news for you, brother. Your Church has been what it is from the very beginning, though it's nice that you've noticed. I'd like to ask what straw it was that broke this particular camel's back, but we haven't got the time. That wasn't what I meant, anyhow. It's Saint-Aignan I don't get. He was nothing special, but I keep running into reasonable enough people with an unreasonable soft spot for him. I'm asking you because you seem to have had it worst. Or why did Tammany Hall have to come to Nero Wolfe to find out about Saint-Aignan and his mission? So what was it about him?"

"That's unkind," MacLellan said, looking away. The pigeon, showing life at last, eyed me unlovingly. "You don't speak French, do you?"

"Can't say I do."

"I do. Nicolas's English isn't...wasn't very good, but it wasn't as bad as he thought. He was self-conscious about it, over-compensated. In French he could be very charming. Never for my benefit, of course, unless he was asking for something." His voice was gentle, but none of that showed in his face, as if he was still trying to keep himself hidden. It wasn't very different from Hanna Brandt doing her best to talk casually about the same man under a different name; she'd said he liked her to talk French to him. I'd have bet French had been a part of Miss Mina Dekker's education, too, once upon a time. 

"Yeah, that's an old story," I said, not entirely without sympathy. "So you let him drag you around to the gambling joints and you paid his debts as long as you could and you hid them from your boss." 

"Yes. All of that. Do you think that was foolish of me? Wrong?"

"Me? You don't want my opinion." I looked him in his watering, pink-rimmed eyes. "You didn't kill him, did you?"

He didn't spark; he sighed. "I almost wish I had."

That was interesting, but not relevant. "But you didn't. Fine. Mr. Wolfe thinks he knows who did, so we'll pass that. How exactly are you expecting us to help you? Did your bosses get wise to your game? Or what?"

"By now, perhaps. It's a matter of time. I came in first thing yesterday morning and found that some of my papers had been seized. Father Keith was suspicious, of course. You saw..." 

I said I had seen plenty. 

"I need a way out. I can't seem to think of one. Can't seem to think at all. But I didn't know where else to go. I'm here because Nero Wolfe is my only hope." 

"Well, for God's sake, don't tell him that." I shook my head. "Let me think a minute. Can I get you anything to eat? Drink?"

"No, thank you. Don't worry about me." 

I wasn't, as it happened; I was worrying about Wolfe finding out that a starving man had been in his house without being offered sustenance. But MacLellan didn't need to know that. For that matter, was he starving? 

"Where were you yesterday, anyway? Father Keith said you were performing solitary devotions, but somehow I doubt it." 

"I....No, that's what I told him. I had to say something. I went to some friends, but I couldn't keep—I had to come here." 

He was about to clam up. Before I could find a new angle of attack, the doorbell rang. MacLellan's pointed nose twitched. 

"Jesus," Tabby said, hopping to the floor. 

I shared the sentiment, naturally. "One thing after another." I looked at my watch. It was barely nine. "Don't move," I told MacLellan. "Don't breathe, if you can help it." 

I went to the front and looked through the one way glass panel. I had to arrange my face before opening up. "Good morning, Mr. Davenport. This is a surprise. What can I—"

Davenport cut me off. "It's unconscionable, I tell you!" 

"I'm sure it is. What, exactly?"

"Shameless profiteering! Fooling a senile old woman like that! She should never have come here alone." 

I stared at him. He must have been further around the twist than I'd thought if he could describe Mina Dekker Davenport as senile. "All right, give me a minute, we'll deal with it."

I shut the door in his face. He was rude enough to start pounding on it at once. I trotted back to the office, where aside from not having turned blue, it looked like MacLellan had followed my instructions to the letter. 

"Change of plan. I'm relocating you to the front room. I don't think you'll want to run into this guy." I waved him in. "It's sound-proofed, so don't worry about making noise. Are you sure you don't want anything to eat?"

"Yes. I mean—no. I'll have something." He dropped into a chair. 

"Very good. Just sit tight." 

I closed the door between the front room and the office and went to tell Fritz to take MacLellan's order after I'd got Davenport safely shut into the office. Then I went to execute my part of the program. 

Davenport was blabbing before we even got into the office, which was sloppy. "My aunt was here yesterday. I know she was, never mind how." He paused importantly; I have never met a man so proud of having sources. As if every schmuck doesn't have sources. Rather than sit down he began to pace, his squirrel dæmon skipping after him, back and forth, which didn't look very dignified to me, but maybe she had nervous energy to work off, too. "I took a chance and trusted you yesterday, Goodwin, and you took advantage of the fact that I didn't know who you were to mine me for information about my aunt. You used it to solicit her business. Now she's gone and hired Nero Wolfe to investigate this Albert—this Saint-Aignan person's death, and my family will be a laughingstock because of it." 

"No one solicited anyone's business," I said, "and if I were you I'd be careful what accusations I threw around. Mrs. Davenport came to us. She had a very civil conversation with Mr. Wolfe. They were—what's the phrase?—in sympathy with each other." 

Davenport paused again, shot me a dirty look, and went on pacing. "It's unconscionable—it's _immoral_ to take her money."

"I doubt it. But anyhow we didn't." 

"It shouldn't be hers in the first place. That's Davenport money. She had no moral claim to it. She—what did you say? You didn't—what?"

"Take her money. She hasn't hired Mr. Wolfe. She came to talk, that's all. Relax." 

"I don't believe you." 

"I'm hurt." 

"I _demand_ to speak to Nero Wolfe."

I was going to refuse but then I thought—why not? After his performance last night, it would be a pleasure to annoy Wolfe while he was with the plants. Davenport was as good an excuse as any, especially when you threw MacLellan into the bargain. 

"Mr. Wolfe doesn't often receive visitors this early in the morning," I said, conciliating. "It may take me some time to convince him that your concern is legitimate. Please wait here. Feel free to read a book for company." 

He sat down, finally, in the yellow chair MacLellan had left empty. His dæmon scampered up the back of it and perched close to his head, stretched out to her full height. I'd swear her tiny squirrel paws were in fists. 

I went to the kitchen, first to find out from Fritz that MacLellan had taken two slices of toast with honey and some orange juice, then to put in a call to the hospital to check on Sam. As soon as I said who I was, I got Jane Kerr herself on the line. Since last night was plenty of time for her to have got the whole hospital wrapped around her finger. 

"It's wonderfully considerate of you to ring, Mr. Goodwin. Sam will be tickled." 

"I bet. She's doing better, then?"

"The doctors say she had a good night, and she's conscious now. It's some kind of miracle she even survived. The idiot who did this—" She cleared her throat. "—the idiot who did this didn't have the first idea how to cut a throat. That's what saved her life, if you can believe it. Missed the arteries." She laughed shortly and without humor. 

"Not a professional—would you say that's your professional assessment, Miss Kerr?"

"I wouldn't put him on my payroll, that's for sure. Sam fought him. That couldn't have made it easy for him, the bastard. Wolfe's going to get him, isn't he?" 

"Sure he is, if your idiot is the same as our idiot."

"If?" 

"And if not, we'll see what we can do. Mr. Wolfe isn't the best private detective in New York City for nothing. Doesn't Sam know who attacked her, then?"

"She's too weak to talk yet—her and her dæmon both. The doctors say it might be a couple of days before they're up to it." 

I said I hoped we'd have it cleared up before then, and Kerr hung up, promising any help she could reasonably give. Only then did I ascend the three flights of stairs to the plant rooms. 

Wolfe and Osanna were conferring in hushed tones about a misbehaving orchid plant.

"What is it now?" Wolfe growled when I approached. 

"Yeah, how do you think I feel? I've been beating them back with a stick all morning." 

He sighed. "Archie." 

"Two contestants. MacLellan in the front room, alive but barely kicking and an admitted heretic, if that's what you call it when you've been ratting out the Magisterium to civilian authorities. Davenport in the office, convinced we're in a conspiracy to fleece his dear, sweet old auntie—I can't imagine who he's talking about, by the way—and won't hear a word to the contrary unless it comes from the tiger's mouth, so to speak. He is being a nuisance. So's the other one." 

"You didn't have to come up here to tell me that," he said testily.

"Maybe not," I agreed. "My youthful enthusiasm ran away with me, I suppose." 

"What does MacLellan want?"

"Sanctuary." 

"And what else?"

"The benefit of your genius to get him out from under. You're his only hope—hey, just like you said. I didn't happen to mention that a ton of bricks is about to come down on his bosses, and I guess he hasn't heard." 

"I'm not running a charity, or an advice column. But we may be able to use him." 

"All right, I'll keep him on ice. And Davenport?"

"An imbecile." 

"I agree, but what are we supposed to do with him? You see I'm being magnanimous and not trying to convince you to go down and talk to him yourself." 

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Then he opened his eyes. "Tell him his aunt will be here at noon, and he can come and see for himself whether I intend to swindle her." 

"So we're putting on a show? Who else do we need?"

"Inspector Cramer. Miss Brandt. Miss Kerr and Mr. Guidry, if you can tear the latter from Sam's bedside. MacLellan we already have. Assemblyman Lesperance. He ought to enjoy it." 

"I'll get right on it. What do I tell them?" 

"Whatever occurs to you." 

He was playing it close to the chest. Still, I thought I saw where he was headed. 

Downstairs, I broke the news of the delay delicately, but I couldn't say that Davenport took it well. 

"Go away and come back later? That's all I get when I've been kept waiting for half an hour? I'm a busy man, Goodwin. I'm running for office. I'll have to rearrange my whole schedule. Why does it have to be then?"

"Oh, it doesn't, but it's when Mr. Wolfe is seeing Mrs. Davenport. The way he figures it, if you don't believe me, the very soul of truth, you won't believe anything but the evidence of your own eyes and ears." 

"But, damn it all..." The squirrel dæmon accompanied him with a muttered chitter, or a chittered mutter. I regretted for a moment that I couldn't get MacLellan in for a Duet for Common Urban Wildlife. 

"Take it or leave it," I said. "My opinion is, it's overindulgent to let you join in, but that's Nero Wolfe for you. Generous to a fault." 

"But..." He sighed. "I'll be there. Don't let them start without me." 

"I wouldn't dream of it." I got up and meaningfully opened the office door. 

Davenport's will to live had apparently cracked along with his resistance; I all but shoveled him out onto the sidewalk. Then I went to look in on MacLellan. He was pushing a last bite of toast around on his plate in a way that was painful to watch. He glanced up with a glimmer of hope when I came in, though. 

"Mr. Wolfe's thought of something to do with you," I told him, "but you'll have to wait and get it from him. I'm about to be very busy. We're getting some people together at noon, and you're invited. I don't know if Mr. Wolfe will want to see you before then, and we're not holding you captive, but all things considered, in your position I'd stay right where you are." 

He blinked at me. Some of what I'd said might just have penetrated his skull. "Who was that leaving just now? It looked like Matthew Davenport." 

"It was. He'll be back. You know him?"

"I was supposed to be getting information about him. For City Hall."

"Pick up anything interesting?" I asked. 

"Not really. I wasn't even a very good spy." He sighed. "What does Matthew Davenport have to do with it?"

"Ask Mr. Wolfe." If he didn't know, I didn't feel like being the one to tell him. And I did have my work cut out for me, getting all those people there in the next two hours. 

I couldn't tell Hanna Brandt whether I was returning her favor; I couldn't tell Inspector Cramer anything, but he knew what Wolfe's parties were and couldn't very well stay away. Lesperance, for all he was out and about and grubbing with the public on a daily basis, took me ten minutes of phone tango to reach, but he pronounced himself honored by the invitation, with more diplomacy than candor, as befitted a politician. He promised to pencil us in, even if he had to snub the President of the Union to do it—how do you like that for a joke. Mrs. Davenport, naturally, was no problem. 

The Kerr contingent was. I ended up getting the car out of the garage and driving to the hospital myself. A hospital corridor, I'll tell you, is no place to try to convince anyone of anything. Those metal buckets they attach to the railings of hospital gurneys for your dæmon to sit in make me sick to look at. So it was just as well that Jane Kerr took care of most of the convincing where Bonny was concerned. 

Kerr was posing as an English country dame today, in a demure tweed suit dressed up with small pearl earrings. Her iron gray hair was in a single thick braid, wound around itself and pinned not very neatly in place. She was sharp-eyed and simmering with anger, which was probably why, the moment the first protest came out of Bonny's mouth, she snapped at him to just do what the nice man said, and Bonny came out to the car with us without saying another word. I'd half expected I would get to see Sam, but visits were still limited to family. 

At 11:55, when I returned to Wolfe's place with Kerr and Bonny, the whole gang was assembled.


	12. Chapter 12

The whole gang was assembled, including Saul Panzer, who met us at the door, Rokhl beside him executing a mock bow as only a dæmon that is half fairy hound can. 

I eyed them suspiciously. "What's your role in this drama?"

"I don't like to spoil the surprise," Saul answered. "That's Mr. Wolfe's prerogative." 

"It sure is," I said. 

I took Bonny and Jane Kerr through to the office and made introductions. It had almost been possible, with her country dame act, to forget that Kerr was a criminal of some notoriety. But there was no covering up her queen of the trash heap slouch or her crooked nose, and while there was no reason a country dame shouldn't have an otter for a dæmon, you could be forgiven for imagining that he wouldn't be so slick and plausible. Bonny, his eyes red from crying but his black's knight getup impeccable and the green and gray moth dæmon flickering around his curly dark head like an intermittent halo, looked like a cross between a thug and a saint. 

The sensation their arrival created among those already assembled was not to be wondered at. 

I considered seating arrangements. Cramer had the red leather chair, presumably on account of our no longer having a client, in the strictest sense; he flipped Kerr an ironic salute with the hand holding his already much-chewed cigar. Beside him were six yellow chairs set up in two rows. Davenport was in the first row, closest to my desk, with his aunt next to him and an empty seat on her other side. Hanna Brandt, more colorless than ever against her cheap powder blue suit, sat behind the empty seat; there was a small table with an ashtray on it beside her, and she was smoking like a chimney. I showed Kerr and Bonny to the two seats next to her, Kerr taking the outside seat; her otter dæmon hopped up into her lap. 

Harvey Lesperance and his gull, a convention of one, were giving the appearance of taking up most of the couch against the wall by themselves. He must have come straight from an event that called for less flamboyant dress than his usual: he had on a charcoal suit, white shirt, and narrow oxblood tie. With his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, he looked relaxed and ready to be entertained. 

Mina Dekker Davenport was stately and somber in dark gold. From the moment their names had been pronounced she and Jane Kerr had been shooting each other looks full of curiosity and interest. It might have been fun to sit them next to each other and let them gossip together, but I figured we'd have enough excitement as it was. 

I saw Saul take his chair against the bookcase, then stepped back out into the hall and stuck my head into the front room. 

In my absence MacLellan had acquired a book to keep him company—an intellectual spy drama written by an Oxford academic, which had been banned in her native land; Wolfe had written her a letter, which I had typed, supporting her but critiquing her narrative conceits. MacLellan even seemed to be reading it, with the pigeon keeping a lookout. That showed revived spirits if anything did; it took concentration to have your dæmon paying attention to one thing while you focused on another. 

"Time for your entrance," I said. 

"Thank God." He gave a faint, tight smile. His dæmon flapped ahead of him into the office and only settled on his knee when I'd deposited him in the empty chair in front of Hanna. Given the option to choose which one of them to watch, I had chosen Lesperance: his relaxed attitude didn't shift when he saw MacLellan, but his dæmon got very interested in a couch cushion. So he knew, probably. Had he been so keen on speaking to me two days ago because he'd been afraid MacLellan might already have gone to Wolfe for help extracting himself from his unsuitable and untenable position of spy?

"Kerr recognized him," Tabby whispered when I'd stepped back from the crowd. "Her dæmon's telling Bonny's now." 

They were all in their places, all but one. Nine humans and nine dæmons (ten of each, with Tabby and me) make a crowd, even in a generously sized room like that office, and it was about to get even more crowded. I went to the kitchen, where Wolfe, a crowd all on his own, was in the habit of waiting while his guests assembled. 

"They're all here. Did you give MacLellan a pep talk or what? He's positively brisk." 

"I accused him of moral bankruptcy, of intellectual laziness, of self-serving crusading and worse besides. Then I dissected the inconsistencies and irrelevancies of the Magisterium's teachings until he was forced to agree that there was nothing in them worth the reverence of any thinking being." 

"That's probably what did it," Tabby remarked, mostly to me, though Osanna, standing with her paws up on the counter to examine the fixings for lunch, overheard and winked her right eye at us. 

Wolfe levered himself upright, and together we proceeded to the office. I introduced the guests he hadn't met before, including Davenport, who barely restrained himself from leaping to his feet. 

"I've done nothing but wait for you today, Wolfe, and I'm sick and tired of it! I want an explanation for this! What are all these people doing here? My God, this Kerr woman is a known criminal! Are you trying to ruin my reputation before the election? It's all right for my esteemed opponent over there, you wouldn't expect him to keep company with anyone but thieves and—"

Wolfe's hand came down onto his desk with a crack. "Mr. Davenport!" 

Davenport, momentarily thrown off, was opening his mouth to continue. Wolfe didn't give him the chance. 

"If you can't hold your tongue, sir, I'll ask Mr. Goodwin to remove you. I assure you he will be happy to comply." 

Davenport shot me a look; I grinned. He shut his mouth and hunched his shoulders. Since it didn't look like I was about to be called on to remove him, I took my seat, Tabby hopping lightly from my shoulder onto the desk. Wolfe got himself adjusted in his chair, Osanna went into her sphinx act at his elbow, and we were ready to begin. 

Wolfe surveyed his audience for long enough that parts of it started to get antsy. Davenport's squirrel was gnawing the back of his chair—very bad manners indeed, and we'd need to replace it with a spare from the basement once the show was over. Hanna was swaying in her seat, hands clutched in her lap. And at last Cramer muttered, "Can we get things moving, Wolfe?"

"In my own time, Mr. Cramer. You're here on sufferance, as usual." He went on before Cramer could settle in for a good bluster. "Ladies and gentlemen, you don't all know each other, but you've been introduced. I see from your faces that some of you are confused, either about the purpose of this gathering or about the presence of some of your fellow guests. Let's get that confusion cleared up at once. We are all here to elucidate the circumstances surrounding the murder of Nicolas de Saint-Aignan, a French academic and alethiometer reader for the Magisterium, who was in this City at the urgent and secret request of Trinity Church to aid in its endeavors to win seats in the upcoming election. As a precaution he was going by the alias Nick Albert." 

Wolfe's voice had gotten louder and louder as he went on, to compensate for the rising murmurs and exclamations of nearly every human and dæmon in the room. I let my eye rove from face to face. Hanna Brandt, Jane Kerr, and Bonny hadn't known about Saint-Aignan's identity: Bonny was confused, Kerr thoughtful, and Hanna, with points of color rising in her pale cheeks, looked shocked and sick, as well she might: her Nicky hadn't been nearly as untouched by the religious wars as she'd thought. Davenport and Lesperance, who had few other points in common, were complaining about Wolfe parting so easily with so much important information. Cramer was champing on his cigar while his mutt, if you'll pardon it, muttered darkly about pointless grandstanding. Mrs. Davenport was having a private chat to her dæmon. Only MacLellan, deflecting the occasional dirty look, was calm, almost relieved; he wanted it over with that badly. 

Wolfe let the murmurs and protests go on for about thirty seconds. Then Osanna gave a rumble that cut through the noise. Wolfe spoke. "Enough! We will get nowhere if you people make a sensation out of each fact of significance. This case has been obscure and tedious, and I'll be glad to have it behind me." 

They shut up, mostly. Hanna was mouthing something to herself or to her puffed up starling dæmon, maybe praying, maybe not, but it wasn't audible and didn't deter Wolfe from going on. 

"There is no lack of motive for nearly anyone in New York City to take it into his or her head to murder an alethiometrist. However, that was not the only possibility, and I had to consider a more straightforward cause than politics when I learned that Nicolas de Saint-Aignan had a gambling habit. United with his singularly bad luck, his habit led him to run up enormous debts in a number of establishments, notably Miss Kerr's Seal and Club, where he was killed three days ago. Shortly before his death, M. de Saint-Aignan had been in a pickle. He had exhausted his resources. His creditors had begun to hound him and soon would have gone beyond hounding—with law enforcement present I'll say no more, but you are all able to appreciate his position. 

"Miss Kerr was chief among his creditors. I may indulge in some poetic fancy and say with little exaggeration that he had come close to selling her his soul, with her expert encouragement. Now, Miss Kerr is a professional and would argue that she is unlikely to kill a man who owes her that much money, especially on her own property. But that alone does not rule out the possibility. One of her employees may have gone too far—or her dealings with Saint-Aignan may have reached further than she shared with me. 

"Yesterday afternoon a young lady in Miss Kerr's employ was attacked, in a sufficiently dramatic fashion, suggesting that Saint-Aignan's murderer was attempting to stop her from communicating some important piece of information—in which he would appear to have failed, as the young lady lives. Though it is just as likely and perhaps more so that Miss Kerr, having brought about Saint-Aignan's death herself and seeking to deflect suspicion, would arrange for her own employee to be attacked. She might even have convinced the young lady to cut her own throat, the better to avoid fatal injury. For it is highly unusual to survive a cut throat, isn't it?"

I had to hand it to him: not for a moment did I believe a word of it, but that didn't stop me from thinking back to Sam's talents with a razor. Wolfe's picture couldn't have been true, but it was too convincing for comfort, and not just mine. There was a clatter and a scuffling: Bonny trying to shoot to his feet, and Kerr forcing him back down into his chair with a hand gripping his shoulder. 

"You wouldn't do that to Sam," he mumbled. "You wouldn't, ma'am, would you?" His dæmon had gone back into her lapel pin routine, this time sitting unnaturally still, like a moth pinned to a card. 

Kerr looked at him coolly until he'd stopped trying to stand. Then she shrugged, not her elaborate shrug but an ordinary, frustrated one. "What do you think?"

"I think..." His voice was steadier, stronger, but his eyes were wild. "I think she'd do it if you asked her. She'd cut her own throat, jump off a building—she'd do anything for you, ma'am." 

More than one person looked away from him as he talked; there wasn't anything nice about watching that kid cut open his heart like that. 

In contrast to Bonny's vibrating tones, Kerr's strident nasal voice as she answered held hardly any feeling. "Boniface, be a dear and control yourself. Of course I wouldn't hurt Sam; she's my best enforcer, no offense to present company. Mr. Wolfe doesn't mean anything by his story, he's just getting warmed up. He knows perfectly well there's a flaw in his pretty picture." 

Bonny didn't answer. Kerr gave Wolfe an expectant look. 

He'd been observing the scene with his lips tight and his hand clenched on the arm of his chair; I'd been waiting for a signal to go break it up, but it was looking like Kerr had it under control. 

Wolfe took his cue. "Miss Kerr is correct. While her involvement would undoubtedly be the ideal solution from Mr. Cramer's point of view—there's no need to comment, sir!—I raised the possibility only to dismiss it once and for all. In fact, Miss Kerr had no motive—that is the flaw she mentioned, though she is unaware at this moment of its precise nature. 

"M. de Saint-Aignan, as I have said, to all appearances was in a pickle—but when I spoke to Miss Kerr two days ago, she told me that within the weeks preceding his death he had begun to pay down his debt, promising that future funds would not be wanting. How to account for this? I surmised the likeliest explanation: that Saint-Aignan had found a wealthy wife to dig him out of his hole. I knew of no suitable women connected to him, but it was only a matter of time until one appeared—and so she did. 

"In Saint-Aignan's wide-ranging social activities he had encountered an elderly widow of high social station and, more pressingly, of enormous wealth. He courted her. The widow, a canny and capable woman, was naturally suspicious of the attentions of a man more than thirty years her junior. She allowed them, because they amused and flattered her, but in the meantime she deployed private detectives and other resources to investigate him. She learned of his debts and of his dealings with women; more importantly, she learned who he was and at once saw the advantage of attaching him. For this reason, leaving him in ignorance of what she had learned, she accepted his proposal of marriage. At the time of his death, Nicolas de Saint-Aignan believed he was in a fair way to resolving all his financial woes, since he was engaged to marry Mrs. Mina Dekker Davenport, Trustee of Columbia University." 

They'd learned their lesson: the murmurs didn't start until the final syllable was out of Wolfe's mouth. Davenport turned red. Lesperance, for a moment, lost his composure and gawked, mouth hanging open; then he threw back his head and laughed. He had Jane Kerr for company, there, bellowing with hilarity, her otter dæmon slapping the floor with his tail. 

"You!" Hanna Brandt had knocked her chair over jumping to her feet. 

Not everyone noticed at once, but slowly the murmurs and laughter faded and all eyes turned to Hanna. Her face was so pale it glowed. Her lips were trembling and tears were starting at the corners of her eyes. 

The starling dæmon, speckled feathers bristling, spoke for her: "So it was you! You got Nicky killed! You took him away from us! Dreadful old woman, we'll—"

"Archie!" 

Fascination had had me riveted; Wolfe's voice brought me back to myself, and I was getting up when Mrs. Davenport spoke. 

"Please, young man, give me a chance." 

I looked at Wolfe, who nodded and said, "You have the floor, madam. Be quick." 

Mrs. Davenport looked up at Hanna. I could only see the back of her head, the smooth white hair held in place with a gold and black lacquered comb, but she was probably giving Hanna whatever version of the martyr's eyes she'd been taught to use on servants or hysterical young women. "Young lady," she said, "I know who you are."

Hanna looked down at her, breathing unevenly. The starling said, "That makes two of us, now." 

Mrs. Davenport continued. "I'm not surprised that you resent me, and I'm prepared to accept my share of the blame if Mr. Wolfe reveals that I had a hand in bringing about Nick's death. I have no intention, however, of apologizing for separating you from him. I acted on general principles, but I won't be swayed from thinking that I was acting in your best interests. Won't you sit, Miss Brandt? It will be much easier to talk that way." 

There must have been some kind of magic in that old lady's chirpy, precise voice. The color had started to come into Hanna's face. After a brief, almost inaudible consultation with her dæmon, she set her chair upright and dropped into it. 

"That's better," said Mrs. Davenport briskly. "I don't know how they raise young girls these days—what they teach them about relations between men and women, I mean. It's a question of understanding what everyone wants. You, for example, were clever enough to know what Nick wanted—a good time. And you told yourself that was what you wanted, too—that, and someone to pay attention to you." 

"But?" Hanna squeaked. I could see her face, though not Mrs. Davenport's: she was biting her lip and blinking in frustration, but not about to blow a gasket. 

"Yes, exactly—but. But you didn't really understand what you wanted. I don't know you intimately, of course. I saw you here for the first time, and what I heard of you came from Nick. So I don't know whether you were in love with him or only wanted to be in love with someone, but it was one of the two. I'm not surprised that Nick should have stirred up that feeling. I myself can imagine, if I were more maternal, I might have felt for him something like what a mother would feel for her son." 

Davenport made a faint gagging noise, and I heard his dæmon whisper, "Disgusting." No one spared them any attention. 

"But he you didn't even know who he was," Mrs. Davenport continued, "and you would have been disappointed whether I made him give you up or not. As for the question of who killed him, and how far it was my fault—I'm interested enough to resent the delay this little explanation has caused us. Will you listen, now, Miss Brandt, and let Mr. Wolfe get on with it?"

"I don't like you," Hanna said. "You can't make me like you." 

"That's quite all right, dear." Mrs. Davenport turned back to Wolfe. Her profile was serene, but I'd watched the bantam rooster restlessly pecking at her little gloved hands the whole time. 

There was a light, steady clapping sound: Jane Kerr was clapping her hands, her head tilted to one side and an operagoer's appreciative smile turned on Mrs. Davenport. 

The old lady shot her a glance. "Oh, really," she murmured. 

"Thank you, Mrs. Davenport," Wolfe said sardonically. "I am not in the habit of letting anyone other than myself put on an oratorical display like that in my office. I resent it. This is not your boardroom, nor a stage at a social function." With that chastisement delivered, he continued: "At any rate you have helped us establish that Miss Brandt had at least one powerful motive in all this—jealousy, whether she knew about the marriage or not. Add to that the possibility that she learned of Saint-Aignan's true identity and his affiliation with the Magisterium, which, owing to her background, she would have had reason to resent, and she begins to look like an attractive murderer." 

"You haven't asked," Hanna said, "but I'm going to refuse to answer, anyway. God, I'd like a drink."

"What can I get you?" I asked. 

"You pick. You owe me one." 

There was a general break for everyone to top up their refreshments. I brought Hanna a rye and water, which she took without a word of thanks or complaint. Once we were all settled again, Wolfe resumed. 

"Having kept it at the back of my narrative thus far, it is now past time to bring the major motive force behind all these events to the forefront: the Magisterium."


	13. Chapter 13

"You don't need me to tell you what sort of threat the Magisterium represents. Most of you have grappled with it in the form of Trinity church, or you have fled its persecution, or your country of origin was once in thrall to it." This last one was for Lesperance, who was rather proud of his parents having come over from the Haïtian Republic. "So you will be able to appreciate the gravity of the picture I am about to paint.

"Father MacLellan, who first engaged me to find Saint-Aignan, was good enough to share some of Trinity's considerations in taking so significant a step as requisitioning an alethiometrist and his instrument. It was the goal of Trinity's, let us say, outgoing leadership, which was intimately connected to the Consistorial Court of Discipline, and of Father Jackson Keith in particular, to spearhead the Magisterium's efforts to assert its power over the New World. He would do this by winning key seats for Magisterium-backed candidates—including Mr. Davenport here—in the election. We would all like to believe, I have no doubt, that our position, as a City-state and as a Union, is secure enough to withstand a temporary shift in the composition of power, even if Trinity had carried off its strategy successfully. We won't have to learn now whether that belief is overoptimistic, because over the course of this murder investigation Trinity Church has placed its objective out of its reach. 

"As relentless an opponent as the Magisterium can be, it is no less demanding a master, which Father Keith and Trinity knew well. That is why, more than Saint-Aignan's murderer unmasked, more than the secret of his presence kept, they wanted the alethiometer kept safe—and instead it was lost." 

He paused, but there wasn't a sensation this time. Looking pleased, Wolfe continued.

"It was lost to Father Keith, at least. This drove him to a frenzy and led to the unraveling of all his schemes. The newspaper accounts so far have been timid and vague, so I will summarize recent events in a few words for those not already aware of them. Yesterday Father Keith caused my confidential assistant, Mr. Archie Goodwin, to be captured, tortured and interrogated with the primary aim of discovering the location of the alethiometer. The police, at my urging, raided Trinity Church to extract Mr. Goodwin from its hold. As soon as we choose to confirm what is currently only rumor, the newspapers will be full of this, and that will break Trinity's power. It has already broken Father Keith's spirit."

They were staring at me, every last one of them, even the ones who'd already known. I waved. "Mr. Wolfe makes it sound all grand and heroic," I said, "and he's the boos, so it wouldn't do for me to sit here and contradict him. I'll be giving out autographs free of charge at the stage door after curtain." 

A faint, disappointed sigh went through the room. Serve them right for staring. 

Wolfe snorted. "Mr. Goodwin's spirits have not been negatively impacted by the experience," he said gruffly. "You will perhaps suspect, having heard about Saint-Aignan's engagement to Mrs. Davenport, that Trinity Church itself had him killed to prevent this defection. By the time I learned of the engagement I had all but to dismissed Trinity from my considerations, but it is a fair suspicion nonetheless. Father Keith does not lack for ruthlessness, whatever else he may be lacking, and while he permitted Father MacLellan to engage me to find Saint-Aignan, it may well have been from overconfidence. However, one this Father Keith would have done at once had he engineered Saint-Aignan's death: he would have secured the alethiometer at all costs. When I learned that it had been left in his hotel room, with the key left on his body, I was all but convinced that Trinity could not be involved.

"But all of that, while highly relevant to the quotidian details of our lives, and to the political future of this City, is by way of being background to the true drama. Trinity Church's two contributions to this murder are as follows: first, summoning Saint-Aignan in the first place, and, second, maintaining passable secrecy concerning his identity."

"It wasn't good enough for Mrs. Davenport, evidently," said MacLellan, politely inclining his head towards his neighbor. That was the atmosphere the old lady carried around with her: you wanted to show off your gallantry.

"Indeed," said Wolfe," but Mrs. Davenport is an exceptional individual with a unique set of resources at her direction, with the added gift of being, in spite of considerable evidence to suggest it is a foolish thing to do, underestimated. And don't forget that Saint-Aignan brought himself to her attention with his courtship." 

"Enough, enough," Cramer grumbled. "Do you know who the murderer is or not?"

Wolfe ignored him. "The secrecy surrounding Saint-Aignan's identity contributed to his murder in that the murderer, had he known who Saint-Aignan, or more to the point, Nick Albert, was, may have thought better of his deed. As it stands he did not learn whom he had killed until after the deed was done, and he had a fairly uncomfortable time of it then. But I said contributed—when we deal with the class of motive that drove this murderer, it is altogether possible that nothing would have been sufficient to dissuade him. For while there is an element of politics behind it, or rather a veneer of politics over it, at its heart is a deranged man with a passionate hatred for women. That explains, incidentally, why Sam was attacked—she is manifestly unwomanly, in the eyes of this man, and nothing goads a pathological woman-hater quite like a woman refusing to act as he had decreed she ought. He went to the Seal and Club to learn if he had left any trace of himself behind, he saw Sam, suspected she knew something or had seen something—I believe, though we cannot ascertain it yet, that she had the misfortune of mentioning that she had spoken to Mr. Goodwin—that is all that was required for the rabid animal to strike. As for the original murder—"

"That wasn't a woman," Bonny put in. He didn't seem to be aware he'd spoken; it was like someone watching a play calling out instructions to the characters. 

"As for the original murder," Wolfe went on, ignoring him, "that was committed as a response to a decision made by a woman, interpreted by this imbecile in the light of his prejudice, and the additional disfigurement of his greed. Thwarted greed, I might add, for surely Mr. Davenport must have known perfectly well that murdering his aunt's fiancé would not get him the money he believed to be his by moral right." 

Everyone else had already got there and been waiting for Wolfe to get a move on. To Davenport it was a lightning bolt striking from a clear sky. His eyes bulged. The squirrel dæmon brushed her claws over and over, the wrong way, through his no longer smooth hair. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He was looking at Wolfe like future roadkill staring down a City bus. 

"Yes, Mr. Davenport," Wolfe said, swiveling his head towards his prey. "You resented the fact that your aunt had control of the money left to her by her husband, your uncle. You resent the idea that women should control any property, isn't that so? You believed yourself entitled to that money, and further you believed, wrongly, that Mrs. Davenport planned to settle it on Nick Albert upon their marriage. Having decided that it was infatuation that had led her to enter into the engagement, of course you believed she would be easily swayed by a personable man some decades her junior. His having the money would have been the final indignity—the final shame. You couldn't have it. You followed Albert, learned when he would be at the Seal and Club, confronted him, and killed him." 

"That's...that's absurd." It was a weak attempt. Davenport swallowed audibly and tried again. "You have no evidence." 

"Saul?" Wolfe prompted.

Saul Panzer stood and approached the audience. He cleared his throat and rotated his beat up cap in his hands. Rokhl stood still and regal at his knee. "This morning Mr. Wolfe asked me to speak to a number of employees of gambling establishments in the vicinity of the Canal, all of which had been patronized by Nicolas de Saint-Aignan in the character of Nick Albert. At four locations, not counting the Seal and Club, employees reported that they had been approached by a man asking about Nick Albert's habits. Margot Mazzi, a dealer at the Wounded Knight, reported that the man attempted to conceal the species of his dæmon by keeping her in the breast of his coat so she could be taken for a rat. The disguise slipped, however, and it was clear that she was a squirrel with a distinctive red tail. Further, a Charlie Duncan, baker's assistant at the bakery across Mercer Street Canal from Miss Kerr's establishment, saw a man of Matthew Davenport's description enter the Seal and Club yesterday at 6:05. Mr. Duncan is sure of the time because he had just finished closing up the bakery, a little late." Saul stopped talking but didn't go back to his seat. 

"Ridiculous," muttered Davenport. Every eye, I need hardly mention, had been drawn to the red plume of his dæmon's tail, which bristled as she crouched along the back of his chair. "None of this evidence will do. Criminals, low-lifes—the bakery no doubt pays protection money to Jane Kerr. It won't... They would say anything!" 

"The scope of the conspiracy you are envisioning is remarkable," said Wolfe, "though perhaps not impossible. However, there will be no doubt whatsoever once the police search your apartment and find the item you took off Saint-Aignan's body after you had killed him." 

Saul had been edging closer, but he still wasn't close enough to do anything about it when Davenport launched himself with a snarl at his aunt. The words "old hussy" might have left his lips, though in fact it may have been something more forceful. 

Mrs. Davenport dodged fairly well for an old timer, and it was only because she lost her balance that she ended up on the floor, with her chair toppling beside her, before Davenport froze. 

He froze for two reasons. 

First, I had one of his arms twisted behind his back almost hard enough to dislocate it. 

Second, Jane Kerr had the squirrel dæmon clutched in both hands. 

The squirrel squirmed and bit and shouted obscenities. Davenport was gray in the face. The rest of us, perfect saps, were staring and trying not to look at the same time. 

"None of that, my girl," Kerr said breezily, with her most inadvertently motherly smile. "No consideration for incompetent murderers." She bent and passed the squirrel over to her otter dæmon, who got a good grip on her. 

We could have been clockworks that had been wound up and suddenly let go. Cramer sprang up to help me with Davenport. Saul was needed meanwhile to hold Bonny's shoulder, since the knight looked ready to break Davenport's face for him. 

Hanna Brandt, at this point, got to her feet and ran out of the office; I found out later from Fritz that she'd made her excuses and said she would walk back to the Churchill. 

Davenport wasn't really fighting, just looking from face to face with outraged disbelief. 

Kerr, before anyone else could get to it, stepped over the toppled chairs to where Mina Dekker Davenport had fallen and held a hand down to her. 

"No bones broken, I hope?" 

Mrs. Davenport took the hand, and Kerr, taking her elbow with the other hand, lifted her gently to her feet. 

"Goodness," said Mrs. Davenport. Her hairdo had stayed perfectly intact. The bantam rooster flapped up to her shoulder, murmuring that it looked like they'd got away with only a few bruises. "That's right," she said, "no bones broken. Thank you, Miss Kerr." 

"At our age you worry about that kind of thing," Kerr answered.

"My dear Miss Kerr, don't be disingenuous. You're nowhere near as old as I am." 

"You'd be surprised." Kerr finally let go of Mrs. Davenport's hand. "I'm older than I look." 

There was a little more in that style, but it would embarrass me to write it and you to read it, and it would certainly embarrass Wolfe to be reminded that it had happened in his office.


	14. Chapter 14

Half an hour later Davenport had been removed and most of the other guests had cleared out. We were left serving celebratory champagne to a counsel representing the chief interests in New York politics, to wit, Assemblyman Lesperance, Father MacLellan, and Mrs. Davenport. The latter had been given the red chair by right of age, not as a comment on the ascendancy of Columbia over Tammany or Trinity, though from a certain point of view you could argue that Columbia had taken the hand that had just been played. Anyway, if we'd been seating them that way, MacLellan would have been on the floor. It was that aspect of the question, rather than the scene we'd just assisted at, that Wolfe had kept them back to talk over. 

"It is virtually assured that the Magisterium candidates will get no joy out of the election, even if one of them hadn't been arrested for murder." 

"Always assuming," Lesperance said with a very meaningful look at Wolfe over his champagne glass, "no one accuses us of framing Davenport and makes it stick." 

"Do you take me for a nincompoop? There is evidence enough, and if there isn't yet, there will be as soon as Mr. Cramer has Davenport's apartment searched." 

"The famous item from the corpse," said Lesperance. "Do you know what it is?"

"I have a notion," Wolfe said, not modestly. 

It was his usual dumb luck: Wolfe had hardly finished speaking when the phone rang. He picked up at the same time I did. 

"We've got it," Cramer's voice, angry but not without a note of triumph, rasped in my ear. "'Dear Nick, Please remember to ring the master of ceremonies with your choices for lunch. I would recommend against the sea bass. Yours, MDD.' Beautiful handwriting, personalized stationery, the works. Damn you, Wolfe, how did you know?"

"To borrow an expression from Archie, I had a hunch." 

"Yeah? You sure it wasn't indigestion? Anyway, we've got him now. There's three sets of fingerprints on it, and I bet we'll have Davenport sewn up as soon as we've identified them. Thanks ever so for the help." He hung up.

Wolfe grunted, then communicated the substance of the call to the counsel. 

"How sordid," Mrs. Davenport said. "That note will become an exhibit in a murder trial, I suppose." 

"He may take a plea deal," Lesperance suggested. 

"Not Matthew. He'll want his day in court." 

"Very likely," Wolfe said. "Mr. Davenport is an imbecile." 

"Will they execute him?" MacLellan asked. He almost managed to make it sound like it didn't matter to him. Even the pigeon behaved. 

"It will depend on how he accounts for himself," Wolfe answered, "but I consider it likely. The Saint-Aignan murder may have been an accident, conceivably, though I doubt it. The violence of his attack on Sam will not promote clemency." 

MacLellan nodded. "He's one of ours, and it's going to be high profile. Someone will have to send a priest to him for last rites." 

"I believe you are going to be doing the sending, sir."

"Me?"

"That's what I said. I was about to recommend you to Mr. Lesperance." Wolfe's eyes went to the assemblyman. "Father MacLellan will be a useful person to cultivate going forward. Trinity Church as a branch of the Magisterium is over, but all its holdings in the City will not vanish on that account. Of course I do not know how the deeds are made out, but I believe that it is Trinity, the business entity, and not the Magisterium itself, that holds title to its various properties. It will be convenient anyway if that can be arranged, against the day when the Magisterium tries to regain its hold or reclaim those properties. For now Trinity will continue to play a role in the City's political vicissitudes, and I suspect it will be leaderless. If you wish, Father MacLellan, you can lead it. With Assemblyman Lesperance's cooperation that shouldn't prove difficult to arrange." 

MacLellan was gawking. "That's absurd." 

"Oh, I don't know about that," Lesperance said, grinning. "Mr. Wolfe likes to pretend he hates politics—it's a position he laid out at some length when we spoke yesterday, under what I admit were trying conditions—but he's got a good head for them. It's worth giving it a go." 

"I..." MacLellan looked lost. "I didn't expect to live very much longer, if you must know. This is a surprise." 

"It can't be worse than dying," Lesperance said, "though don't quote me on that."

"I am not sure... I've been wrestling with my conscience. I'm not sure I could feel justified going back to the Church when..."

"Church is about to look a whole lot different. I'm game if you are, Father." 

"Very well." 

They shook hands. 

"And me?" asked Mrs. Davenport. "Don't I get a chance to object to this tidy little arrangement?" 

"You and your college are free to respond as you see fit, madam," Wolfe told her, "though not here. You have graced my office with enough of your oratory. Besides, I believe you are on your way to forming an unprecedented alliance of your own." He looked very grim saying it, but still, Mrs. Davenport might have been forgiven for thinking she was being teased. 

She raised her eyebrows at him and sniffed. "I'll take that remark in the spirit it was intended, Mr. Wolfe." 

"Is there anything else?" asked Lesperance. "I need to be in Philadelphia tonight." 

"Perfectly understandable," Wolfe said. "I need to have my lunch." 

That was the sign that they were dismissed. They left, and at nearly two o'clock we finally sat down to lunch. The French dip, the avocado and tomato salad, the sour cherry tart and cheese selection were engrossing, and Wolfe's conversation was light-hearted, but I had something on my mind. 

"All right, two things," I said when we were back in the office. 

His eyes were closed. My only answer was a loud, slow yawn from Osanna. I carried on undaunted. 

"First: Davenport's mental state after he found out who he'd snuffed by mistake." 

His eyes opened a crack. "You know that, too, Archie. Didn't you remark that Davenport acquitted himself unusually poorly in his debate with Lesperance on the afternoon following the murder?"

"Oh, sure. I should have got that myself." Actually I had, or close enough to it; I was establishing that genius or no he still needed some grist for his mill, like the rest of us mortals. "But it's the second thing that's really worrying me. That note. The one Davenport took off the corpse?" 

"Well?"

"How could you possibly know that? And don't talk to me about hunches. You don't get hunches."

"I had to say something to Mr. Cramer." He opened his eyes a little wider and shrugged. "I could hardly have told him the truth." 

He sounded smug and looked worse. 

Tabby was butting Osanna's side with her head, which the tiger was responding to by shifting away as slowly as possible. I watched them at it for a moment, considering my angles of attack. 

"The truth, huh? See, I had an idea, but it sounded loony. I wanted to ask first so I wouldn't make a mistake."

Wolfe didn't even shift; he just sat. 

"That alethiometer—you told me you didn't get anything out of it." 

The smugness of his expression became even more obnoxious. All he said was, "It's a question of mental states." 

I waited, but there was nothing else. I started in on him. "Anything else useful you picked up while you were getting speech out of that doohickey? Where that first lost alethiometer washed up, maybe? Imagine the sap you could squeeze out of the Magisterium tree for that piece of information. Or how about an explanation for this new Dust thing you were babbling about at dinner last week? No money in that, maybe, but wouldn't it be fun to know something no one else can seem to figure out? Or what about—"

The doorbell rang. Fritz ushered in a neat little office lackey with, by coincidence, a rabbit dæmon like Saint-Aignan's had been, bearing an envelope. She explained, nervously, that Father Keith had told her not to come until now. The envelope contained Trinity Church's check for a hundred grand, made out to Nero Wolfe. Her duty done, the office lackey bolted. 

I admit, even after Wolfe had spooked him, I hadn't really believed that Keith would go through with it. It was a perfect ending to that case. Let Wolfe keep his aura of mystery about the note; every little bit helps keep the flame alive. 

Of course the case wasn't really over until a few months later, when Matthew Davenport, having wasted his day in court on histrionics it was embarrassing to read about, was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. The arguments about an anbaric current to the brain being a more human way of executing capital judgments hadn't carried the day yet. 

You'll want to hear about the rest of the players. Now, I can't tell you about Hanna Brandt, because she seems to have vanished, but I'm up on the rest of them. 

I went to see Sam about a week after Davenport's arrest. She was sitting up in bed with a jacket thrown over her shoulders, throat bandaged and head stubbly, Terpsichore the turtle swimming around in a plastic tub at her bedside, looking more like a wounded soldier than a victim. She identified Davenport as the man who attacked her, and magnanimously declined to seek civil damages, considering. Afterwards she made a full recovery, aside from the lingering hoarseness of her voice, which I understand she finds useful for intimidating people. Bonny, on the other hand, seems to have decided that the violent life isn't for him and accepted an apprenticeship at the bakery across Mercer Street Canal. 

Mina Dekker Davenport and Jane Kerr have continued the unprecedented alliance struck up so dramatically in Wolfe's office, to the awe and dismay of much of New York. It's anyone's guess whether it's more astonishing to see Mrs. Davenport ornamenting the bar at the Seal and Club or Jane Kerr scandalizing sedate Ivy proceedings in her risqué eveningwear. We had the two of them to dinner one night last month—it happened to be the night after the election, so, predictable as the outcome was, not much else got talked about. They made a highly respectable showing. Tabby, whose manners are not always as perfect as mine, happened to overhear Mrs. Davenport call Kerr "Goldie," a data point which would seem to support my idea that she wasn't born Jane Kerr. 

Father Keith had split almost immediately after Wolfe's dressing down, and about half of Trinity's core staff followed him over the next few days into the warm arms of their parent organization in Europe. The remnants left behind to hold down the fort were disordered by the mass desertion and by the attack led by the press—I'd sat down with Lon Cohen by then and confirmed what stood confirming; the police department had also released a statement. 

MacLellan had no difficulty swanning—or pigeoning—in and taking over amid all that hubbub. He seemed to have made peace with his conscience, or liked the work enough to ignore it. He and the safely reelected Lesperance were cooperating nicely to rewrite Trinity's charter when the events of the last few weeks rendered that exercise moot: with the weather going crazy, holes opening up in the sky, angels flying overhead and sometimes stopping for a chat, and armies marching all over the globe, the Magisterium's supremacy is looking uncertain. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of villains. 

Wolfe has been suspiciously unsurprised by all these developments, but I guess that's just a pose; I haven't done him the favor of asking about it.


End file.
